A troupe’s school of the Bard rocks, with laughter

DOGBERRY, the clownish constable, wears a rubber nose. Beatrice and Benedick try to out-insult each other with digs that begin, “You’re so dumb .... “ The romantic lead, Claudio, is so vain that he rolls his hair in curlers just before a big scene. And is that a song coming on? Why, it’s a Doobie Brothers tune.

Such tomfoolery can only mean that Troubadour Theater Company is having a lark with yet another Shakespeare play. This time, it’s “Much Ado About Nothing,” which has been combined with the Doobies’ feel-good hits of the 1970s to become “Much Adoobie Brothers About Nothing,” at Miles Memorial Playhouse in Santa Monica.

Bell-bottom jeans are worn alongside Elizabethan doublets and breeches, and hilariously awful wigs evoke the stringy hairstyles of the Doobies era. A phrase or two of Shakespeare’s gets spoken every so often, but mostly, the original story is a jumping-off point for comic riffs and clownish behavior.

At the story’s core are the young lovers Hero and Claudio, who, as played by Lynette Rathnam and Joseph Leo Bwarie, are so hot for each other that a “parental advisory” placard is hastily placed in front of one of their clinches. Another would-be couple, the bickering Beatrice and Benedick, are trash talkers even in Shakespeare’s 1590s version, so Jen Seifert and Eric Anderson just nudge them into the present day with their verbal smackdown.

Matt Walker, who conceived and directed the show, also occupies a central role as the villainous Don John. Waving his arms over his head and grunting “Evil,” he behaves like a strangely malevolent orangutan. Swapping genders to portray a fellow baddie, Beth Kennedy dons a sad, scraggly mustache and shag wig that put the lie to the character’s self-image as a suave criminal mastermind.

When the plot needs to be moved along (or, just because it’s time for a really smokin’ song-and-dance break), a five-member band begins to rock and the performers launch into such Doobies classics as “Takin’ It to the Streets,” “What a Fool Believes” and “Black Water.”

Put it all together and you have the truest hallmark of any Troubadour show, be it “The Comedy of Aerosmith” or “Fleetwood Macbeth”: an audience laughing so hard it can hardly breathe.

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‘Much Adoobie Brothers About Nothing’

Where: Miles Memorial Playhouse, 1130 Lincoln Blvd., Santa Monica

When: 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 4 p.m. Sundays

Ends: Sept. 10

Price: $25

Running time: 2 hours

Also: 7 p.m. Oct. 1 at La Mirada Theatre, 14900 La Mirada Blvd., La Mirada

Info: (800) 595-4849 or www.troubie.com