Charles
Isherwood

December 15, 2015

Try to forget Shakespeare, and it’s easy enough to have a goofy good time at “These Paper Bullets!,” a lively if labored update of “Much Ado About Nothing” that the Atlantic Theater Company opened on Tuesday. Nobody goes to see a Shakespeare play primarily for the songs — when there are any. But the jangling rock tunes by Billie Joe Armstrong, of Green Day fame, provide energizing interludes in Rolin Jones’s wholesale rewrite of the original comedy, now set in the London of the Swinging Sixties and focusing on the frenzy surrounding a hugely popular rock band called the Quartos. (Get it?) In their trim suits, skinny ties and face-hugging hair mops, the Quartos are clearly modeled on the Beatles in the first years of their fame. Accordingly, Mr. Armstrong’s songs — orchestrated with care by Tom Kitt — mimic the singalong choruses and hip-shaking rhythms of early Beatles hits, the ones you may hear in your head through a sonic wall of screaming teenage girls.