tarting right at the end of the would-be wedding between Hero and Claudio, Kill Claudio! takes a hard left turn into a surrealist, darkly comic foray into what might have been if revenge had been exacted against Claudio in the way Beatrice requests of Benedick in Act 4, scene 1 of Much Ado About Nothing:
BEATRICE I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest.
BENEDICK Come, bid me do anything for thee.
BEATRICE Kill Claudio.
This exploration of Shakespeare’s text does for Much Ado About Nothing what Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead does for Hamlet, expanding on themes, probing character flaws, and throwing in a musical number here and there.