Salt and Sage produced Much Ado About Nothing in repertory with The Winter’sTale between Thanksgiving and the Winter Solstice in 2025. Much Ado About Nothing balanced physical comedy with sincere investment in the complexity of Benedick and Beatrice’s on again off again history and the cruelty of Claudio public slander of Hero. Only Benedick and Beatrice found their way to wedlock at the end. As Oregon Arts Watch put it “this Hero, played by Nina Pamintuan, is not the bashful and boo-hooing victim we usually see, but a woman enraged by her unworthy fiancé. Her act of defiance when left standing at the altar is a theatrical triumph – visually changing the tone of the Elizabethan play without imposing a clumsy and contemporary re-write.”