“It’s like Chinese whispers,” he says. “The play is filled with people overhearing, but always getting it wrong.” He intends to give that “noting” a very precise setting.

He reflects on past productions, “I’ve seen Much Ado set in Cuba, in India of the British Raj, but never in Messina where Shakespeare locates it”. So Doran’s production will create a very real sense of place, time and society in Sicily’s capital.

It is 1936 and Mussolini’s troops are returning home after the war in Abyssinia. That setting is likely to add to audience frisson on hearing Claudio’s notorious vow that he will wed a substitute Hero “were she an Ethiop”.

But the director’s intentions extend far beyond such local intensities. The Sicilian setting immediately establishes a place where passions run high, and where women and men are sharply polarised, so giving extra force to Beatrice’s railing against women being merely chattels in marriage.

Sicily also creates a strong sense of the church and its power. “For Hero to be called a whore at the altar takes on an especially disturbing significance”.

And of course, there’s the mafia. Doran emphasises that costumes will not be shades and fedoras, and that Leonato is no mafioso Godfather. But he stresses how the Sicilian connection adds sinister resonance to Leonato’s veiled threat against Claudio that he has “choice of friends”. It also intensifies the motivation of Don John’s villainy and the betrayal of his brother: “vendettas are never-ending.”

Two particular pleasures are in store. That very English constable Dogberry will bear a striking resemblance to Mussolini. The Italian love of music will be realised with Balthasar played by an opera-trained actor.

Rex Gibson is the editor ofthe Cambridge School Shakespeare Series