Earlier this week I was lucky enough to attend a performance of Jamie Lloyd’s Much Ado About Nothing at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. Wow. As good a show as I can remember and a coruscating interpretation of Shakespeare’s 1598 work.

In weaving a modern aesthetic into the play, the director added a 90s club soundtrack, featuring the vocal talents of Mason Alexander Park who takes the part of Margaret, Hero’s (for that is her name) witty and worldly assistant. The production ends with an uplifting rendering of French DJ and record producer David Guetta’s song ‘When Loves Takes Over’.

Much Ado is not one of the Bard’s more challenging dramas, but it manages to hold up a mirror to enduring societal expectations around gender roles and marriage, with the usual sprinkling of misunderstanding and deception.

Significantly, though, and captured in the central relationship between Beatrice and Benedick, all is resolved, ultimate triumph is achieved, by love. Cue the song.

I left the theatre on a high, reflecting, despite the doom and gloom that dominate the news, on how stories well-told can elucidate important ideas, how collective experiences unite and inspire. And how love for others does cut through the crap.

In an interview for his Ways To Change The World Podcast, journalist and TV presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy quizzed actor Brian Cox about his route out of the jungle in these troubled times.

Not a fan of the orange one (“there is nothing virtuous about that man whatsoever”), Cox railed against the naked self-interest that the world’s most powerful males have embraced so vigorously. “When greed gets in the way, then things start to get meaningless.” There is a void rather than “care about how we move forward.”

As for the Donald’s calling card, his negotiation fixation, even the guy behind Succession’s Logan Roy has his limits: “the deal has nothing to do with human beings.” Cox clearly finds it hard to imagine Trump loving anyone other than himself.

For the Scottish thespian, a mere two weeks older than the “clearly deluded” POTUS, the arts can play a significant role in keeping us all sane, taking on big issues but perhaps more palatably through allegory and entertainment. For a man so clear-thinking about the current threats to civilisation, he remains optimistic.

Why? Because, overall, as he stressed in his conversation with Krishnan, what we can all value and demonstrate, in the face of anti-social leadership, are empathy, kindness and understanding. For its part, the theatre can dramatise compassion while we have agency over our own behaviour. And there are more of us than them.

These are not the 1960s. We may never again enjoy the innocence of idealism, but love has been victorious throughout the ages (including the late 1590s), and it can be again.

It’s time for a love takeover. That’s what I call a deal.