There can be few more charming places to pass a London summer evening than this alfresco Regent’s Park venue.

As the sun sets, the fairy lights twinkle, the Pimm’s flows and, as often as not, a Shakespeare comedy plays out agreeably before us.

There’s no Midsummer Night’s Dream this year — one can have too much of a good thing — but instead sparkling wordplay from those two most unwilling yet sophisticated lovers, Beatrice and Benedick.

The most successful versions of Much Ado — the Kenneth Branagh film, say, and Marianne Elliott’s recent award-winning RSC production — have one thing in common. They balance the prose and the passion, the delightful romantic comedy and the dragging melodrama, so that the fizzing scenes featuring B and B don’t leave everything and everyone else trailing forlornly in their wake.

Unfortunately, this is a balancing act that Timothy Sheader, the Open Air Theatre’s artistic director fails to pull off.

Thus the misogyny-rich sub-plot that revolves around callow Claudio spurning the wronged Hero at the altar seems even more peremptory and dislikeable than usual.

Beatrice might be clever and independent but, Shakespeare’s play reminds us with a sobering thump, she lives in a society in which men hasten to the harshest of judgments, based on the flimsiest of evidence, against their mates.

Still, it’s hard to carp excessively when Samantha Spiro is part of the dramatic equation.

This undervalued actress was surely born to play the rapier-witted Beatrice, who has spent years using humour to cover up a Benedick-broken heart and now engages in a “merry war” with him. Spiro fires out her lines delightfully, and entirely dominates the stage.

Sean Campion does his best as her sparring partner, but it’s not difficult to guess who will be wearing the doublet and hose in that marriage.
Philip Witcomb’s design sensibly works in harmony with the natural attributes of the space, providing an attractive curved wooden playing area dotted with citrus trees.

Frolics among the fruit become the focus of a couple of fine set-pieces, in which the reluctant lovers are tricked by their friends into falling for each other. Claudio and Hero sort it out too, of course, but this won’t be where your attention lies as dusk turns, enchantingly, to darkness.
 
Until 27 June. Box Office: 0844 826 4242. www.openairtheatre.com