Much Ado About Nothing is the Shakespeare play I am fondest of. It may not be his most earth-shattering play or packed with integrity and emotional undulations, but it’s smart, fast-paced and funny — not to mention, home to an uncharacteristically strong female role in the form of Beatrice (Deborah Wastell). It is simplistic, yet clever as it journeys through all the attributes of solid gold entertainment.

Don Pedro (Kirk Collen) and his troops have returned victorious from war: they are heroes and they know it. They descend onto the house of Leonato, or Leonata in this instance (Julia Munrow), with gusto: loving, conniving, losing, heart-breaking, mouthing off and ultimately uniting. There’s a lot to piece together to balance Shakespeare’s comedy perfectly. If it isn’t done well the pace of the narrative gets carried away with itself and it becomes a bit nothing-y. A surface level soap opera with all the treasure of it left lurking, unnoticed, beneath that surface.

In Professional Help’s case it didn’t quite work. There’s no shortage of talent, but that talent is incohesive. It’s every man for himself as the cast squabble for the limelight, trampling on meaning and moments as they go. Their individual talent is precisely that which makes this so jarring. If their talent were invested into the construction of an ensemble then they’d have made an immeasurably clearer interpretation of the narrative. For instance, Collen’s Don Pedro characterisation involves a bold South American accent. Though stately and authoritative, it simply doesn’t fit, isolating him nonsensically from the rest of the cast. Even his own brother Don John sticks to his own accent.

Andrew Lambe’s Dogberry ensures that he is louder and more garish than everyone else he is sharing the stage with, inflating his own importance over his most prominent task: to expose the deviant Don John and his partially successful plot to de-honour Hero and break her union with Claudio. Steve Blacker’s Benedick interprets the inherent wit of the character with effortless comedy. He switches between Benedick’s laddish nature and his underlying compassion with ease, never losing sight of the story he is telling. Simon Every’s Don John is clearly a natural comedian, with impeccable timing and crowd-pleasing technique, but not as convincing as a baddy though.

One of the greatest things about creating theatre is that it can be as beneficial for you, as a company, as it is for the audience. The camaraderie and general joy involved in creating something is as important a process as it’s aim: to entertain. When the actor puts themselves and their own enjoyment way above the necessity to entertain, problems weave their way in.

Much Ado About Nothing is playing at the Camden People’s Theatre until 19 July. For tickets and more information, see the Camden People’s Theatre website.