Donald Eastman's handsome, sparse set of weathered gray-blue planks, a plastered upstage wall and a slightly askew central square platform tiled with yellowed pages from Shakespeare's plays works as well for Much Ado as for Complete Works. Director Carmen Khan uses just eight chairs and a few props—along with Vickie Esposito's elegant white, cream and tan costumes and Jerold R. Forsyth's splendid lighting—to stage a visually pleasing production.

Khan also streamlines the romantic comedy's list of characters, combining and cutting roles for a trim cast of 13, but her economizing doesn't reduce the play's running time, which clocks in at two hours and 45 minutes. Contrary to Shakespeare's title, the production makes too much of everything—too many funny moments are spun as elaborate comic bits that cry for brevity and expediency.

Much Ado features the witty repartee of Benedick and Beatrice, resolute bachelors whose friends conspire to match them despite their professed antipathy. "If they were but a week married," Beatrice's uncle Leonato (Gregg Almquist) predicts, "they would talk themselves mad." Khan casts both characters as middle-aged: Patricia Kelley gives Beatrice's wit a spinster's severity (fueled, in one scene, by drunkenness) and the irksome habit of laughing at her own jokes. Dean Harrison more successfully reveals the lonely desperation beneath the bachelor-by-default's boasts. That both address many of their lines to the audience further erodes their (and our) confidence; their witty exchanges are awkwardly punctuated with anxiety.

More successful are surrounding performances: Damon Bonetti makes a charming Don Pedro and Brian McCann brings oily grace to his mischievous brother Don John, though resorting to violence with henchman Borachio (Aaron Hochhalter) seems beneath both him and the play. Kendrick Burkholder surprises as a more believably inept Claudio than usual, with Elizabeth Mugavero playing a sweetly complimentary Hero.

John Zak's zany Constable Dogberry is a welcome addition after intermission, working hilariously with his sole deputy, Dan Higbee as Verges. But much of their sculpted slapstick—along with the elaborate ruses that join Benedick and Beatrice—plays as if pedaling uphill.

With Much Ado About Nothing, the title's the thing—a production makes too much of the play at its peril.

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, Through May 21, in rep, Philadelphia Shakespeare Festival, 2111 Sansom St., 215-496-8001 or www.phillyshakespeare.org