As actor Alexis Denisof reminds the Straight in a call from Los Angeles, “There are no stage directions in Shakespeare.” Which gave filmmaker Joss Whedon—yes, that Joss Whedon, the pop-culture hit machine behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer and last year’s The Avengers—the opportunity to go a little broad with his adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing (which opens Friday [June 21]).

“It’s not like Shakespeare’s telling you not to do it,” Denisof adds, chuckling, about some of the more “slapsticky” moments in the film. In this case, he and Amy Acker, who play the merrily warring duo of Benedick and Beatrice, are permitted to throw some scene-stealing physical comedy into their performances, including a shuddering staircase pratfall from Acker that would make Dick Van Dyke proud. It all contributes to a sort of light, mobile reading of the text and a hugely entertaining contrast to the more stately kind of Bard on film we’re used to seeing.

Shooting the thing with old friends and colleagues in Whedon’s own gorgeous Santa Monica home, replete with iPhones cleverly integrated into the action and the ever-present traces of a seemingly permanent cocktail party, adds to the film’s overall giddiness. Denisof has been part of the filmmaker’s creative family for more than 20 years, but was he ever involved in the fabled Shakespeare reading parties that Whedon used to throw back at the turn of the century?

“I was,” Denisof says, “and this is one of the plays we read at the time, with myself and Amy in these roles. And, in fact, Joss has said that was when the idea occurred to him that he could maybe do a Shakespeare movie one day. He always thought that if he did, this was the one he’d make. I’m just glad he didn’t tell me, because then I would have been even more nervous about it.”

Denisof’s anxiety might have been stoked a little by the necessary speed and guerrilla approach taken by Whedon and his small crew. Incredibly, the whole thing was shot during a 12-day interval in the production of The Avengers. “You need to take that break between shooting a film that size and then getting into the equally exhausting job of editing it,” the actor says, “and this is how Joss chose to recharge. And it worked! He said he went back to The Avengers full of energy after doing this.”

The result is pretty irresistible, and not just because we get to see so many players from the Whedon universe—including Clark Gregg, Fran Kranz, and Nathan Fillion—sink their teeth into the material but because they all happen to be expert entertainers. As Denisof wryly notes: “I think that high-school teachers all over the world will be grateful that they finally have a Shakespeare movie that they can pop into the DVD player without making the class fall asleep.”