- June 17, 2026
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Most people don’t need Google to name the most produced playwright of all time. Four centuries after his death, William Shakespeare’s plays and modern adaptations are on stages around the world. Right now, you can see a bilingual version of “Romeo and Juliet” in New York’s Shakespeare in the Park set on the Mexican-American border.
Closer to home, grad students at FSU/Asolo Conservatory recently presented a magical version of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” with fairies gamboling on circus silks.
There’s no arguing that the Bard has very long “legs,” even if his identity is in dispute. In 2024, Urbanite Theatre produced Katie Bender’s “Judith,” which floated the idea that Shakespeare’s plays were actually written by a sister.
Speaking of female playwrights, do you know who topped American Theatre Magazine’s rankings for most produced plays in 2025? (The ranking is for all American playwrights, not just women.) Hint: She also held the No. 1 spot in 2017, 2019 and 2023.
The playwright in question, Lauren Gunderson, was in Sarasota the week of June 8, fine-tuning her new play, “Lady Disdain.” If you’re a Shakespeare fan, you’ll suspect there’s much ado about something at FSU Center for the Performing Arts.
Gunderson’s rolling world premiere is an original play, not an adaptation of Shakespeare’s comedy, “Much Ado About Nothing.” But its lead characters are descendants of Benedick and Beatrice, who are tricked by their friends into falling in love in “Much Ado.”
Directed by Florida Studio Theatre veteran Sean Daniels, “Lady Disdain” is rollicking fun best categorized as “worlds collide.”
Most of the action takes place at a producer of audiobooks, where former lovers Ben and Beatrice are voicing the characters in a steamy romantasy novel.
Ben (Casey Murphy) had moved on to the big screen as the villain in a superhero series. But he’s back in the audiobook world after his caped character got canned. His unexpected arrival irks his former paramour, Beatrice (Veronika Duerr). Her barbs are so caustic that she is dubbed “Lady Disdain” in the original Shakespeare play and she keeps the tradition going here.
Mirroring “Much Ado About Nothing,” the supporting characters in “Lady Disdain” engage in what was called “gulling” in olden days. They tell Ben that Beatrice suggested him for her sparring partner, while Beatrice is led to believe that Ben lobbied to work with her.
Underscoring the Shakespeare connection is a neon sign on stage reading, “Man is a giddy thing.” Unless you’re familiar with the Bard, you may not recognize the quote from “Much Ado.” Today, the word “giddy” is used to describe overwhelming happiness. Back in Shakespeare’s day, it meant “fickle” or “frivolous.”
It’s often said that it’s a “women’s prerogative to change her mind,” but it’s Benedick who has a change of heart in “Much Ado.” In “Lady Disdain,” Beatrice sees Ben through new eyes after he saves the day for a wronged colleague.
Lest gentle readers think “Lady Disdain” is a contrived effort to make Shakespeare relevant, think again. Gunderson’s play is its own frisky animal. It moves at breakneck pace, with the stage going dark to usher in new scenes.
The milieu is very much of the moment, when nude pictures (real or fake) of celebrities and civilians alike blow up on social media, destroying or elevating reputations overnight.
The characters in “Lady Disdain” are familiar in today’s internet-driven world, where one’s brand is marketed to strangers. There are “smash the patriarchy” feminists, young people sharing their recovery journey and ruthless business owners willing to jettison employees whose stock has fallen on social media.
Even if we don’t know these folks personally, we know their ilk. Think dueling lawsuits between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, the warring stars of “It Ends With Us.”
The version of “Lady Disdain” that audiences saw on opening night was refined in previews as Gunderson and Director Sean Daniels watched how scenes were landing. If something wasn’t working, Gunderson would tweak the script and have actors deliver different lines in the next performance.
“Lauren has a real love of audiences. She loves to research and she’s very fast,” Daniels says.
Sarasota theater fans will remember Daniels from his time at Florida Studio Theatre, which he joined as associate director in 2023. One of his plays, “The White Chip,” a semi-autobiographical show about a theater director who gets sober, went on to play in New York, Tokyo and London.
What Sarasota theatergoers might not know is that Daniels went to high school with Gunderson in Atlanta and that she is an alum of Dad’s Garage, the successful theatrical troupe that Daniels co-founded in 1995. Dad’s Garage has come to Sarasota for the FST Improv Festival.
“Lauren is an old friend of ours,” Daniels said in an interview. “She married my wife and I.” (Presumably, there was a justice of the peace or minister involved as well.)
Even with a playwright as widely acclaimed as Gunderson (“Silent Sky,” “The Book of Will,” “I and You”), getting from script to stage doesn’t happen overnight. Daniels says he knew Gunderson was working on an update of “Much Ado” and reached out to Peter Rothstein about directing it not long after Rothstein was hired as producing artistic director of Asolo Repertory Theatre in 2023.
Fast forward. After a stop in Madison, Wisconsin, “Lady Disdain” is making its second world premiere in Sarasota, in a production turbocharged by scenic design, lighting design, sound design and original music from Asolo Rep’s creatives.
“What’s really cool is that this play is eventually going to be seen everywhere and that Sarasota audiences get to see it first,” Daniels says. (Well, almost first.)
“Lady Disdain” is propelled by sexy voices bringing the innuendo-laden dialogue of bodice rippers to the airwaves. Even the customary warning to silence your cellphones before the curtain rises is delivered in a swoon-worthy fashion by Murphy.
If you want to see the antithesis of Dad bod, keep your eyes peeled toward the end of the show. Like everything else in “Lady Disdain,” it happens in the blink of an eye.
Reading the credits, you’ll see that Urbanite Theatre Artistic Director Summer Dawn Wallace serves as intimacy coordinator, so there will be no sexual harassment and defamation lawsuits, à la Lively-Baldoni.
Wallace is also friends with Gunderson. In September 2025, Gunderson delivered the keynote speech at Urbanite Theatre’s annual Modern Works Festival celebrating female playwrights.
Attendees got to learn about Gunderson’s creative process, which has yielded honors such as the Lanford Wilson Award from the Dramatists Guild of America and the Harold and Mimi Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award, not once but twice.
Even among Sarasota’s colorfully dressed theater patrons, it was hard to miss Gunderson on opening night of “Lady Disdain.” She wore an eye-catching hot pink silk shirt, red sequined pencil skirt, silver stiletto heels and oversized glasses.
With classic lines enlivened by outrageous color, Gunderson’s attire suggested a desire to upend convention. She looked like a woman with the sensibility to give the Bard a glowup.
A giddy thing indeed.
