Broadway audiences know her from her starring roles in such musicals as Contact (which won her a Tony Award) and Steel Pier. But now Karen Ziemba is branching out and making her professional Shakespearean debut in Much Ado About Nothing at the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington.

Co-produced with Connecticut's Hartford Stage, the comedy is directed by that theater's former artistic director, Mark Lamos, who has set the action in the 1920s. Ziemba plays disdainful Beatrice opposite Dan Snook as the equally reluctant Benedick. Kathleen Early and Barrett Foa are their conventionally lovestruck foils, Hero and Claudio.

Show times at the Shakespeare Theatre, 450 7th St. N.W., Washington, are 7:30 p.m. most Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Sundays; 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays; with matinees at 2 p.m. Saturdays and most Sundays, and noon selected Wednesdays, through Jan. 5. Tickets are $16-$66. For more information call 202-547-1122 or 877-487-8849.