Regional Theater Review: LOVE’S LABOR’S LOST (Elizabethan Stage at Oregon Shakespeare Festival)

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by Tony Frankel on September 20, 2011

in Theater-Regional

LOVE’S LABOR’S LOST,
FOUND, LOST, LOST, AND FOUND

[England, 1593] I’m not so sure that this William Shakespeare has a future as a playwright. Oh, the man can write, but his newest play, Love’s Labor’s Lost (LLL) is a near disaster of storytelling. Surely, he had a bona fide hit with last year’s The Taming of the Shrew, but now that he’s all the rage, Mr. Shakespeare, as with many modern scribes, is so preoccupied with clever wordplay—festooning the audience with consonants and vowels as if they were rice at a wedding—that he forgot about plot. No doubt Elizabethans are so preoccupied with The Plague that they need boundless punning and droll combats to relieve their current dread, but the plot’s trajectory in LLL has all the power of a field mouse tossing a feather to the wind, proving that an ardent aptitude for language is no replacement for storytelling. Even the notes in the program scroll acknowledge that the combination of rhyme-ridden sonnets, rapid-fire banter, and misunderstandings make this play dense, occasionally impenetrable and, to this reviewer, more often soporific.

Love’s Labor’s Lost by William Shakespeare at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival – directed by Shana Cooper – Los Angeles Theater Review by Tony Frankel

Were it not for Shana Cooper’s imaginative direction at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, LLL would do nothing more than create the sleeping death of an apothecary’s potion. Clearly, since most theatres have been closed due to Plague, this play was written for private performance. Obviously based on The Protestant Henry of Navarre, only the most educated among us will see that it is overstuffed with topicalities, inside jokes, and references to contemporary events. (You could imagine this play being performed 400 years from now—audiences will be positively mystified.)

The writing grabs us at the start, loses us, jolts us, loses us, and loses us again, but then ends on a gorgeously staged finale which proves to be one of the most magical moments ever witnessed in the theatre.

Love’s Labor’s Lost by William Shakespeare at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival – directed by Shana Cooper – Los Angeles Theater Review by Tony Frankel

Pleasant hilarity abounds when Ferdinand, King of Navarre (Mark Bedard), has compelled his friends to join him in a vow of abstinence from indulgence and women for three years as a way to concentrate on their studies, thus making his court a school of art to rival the Medici’s in Italy. Longaville (Ramiz Monsef) and Dumaine (John Tufts) are in agreement, but Berowne (Gregory Linington) questions an item on the contract: If a man is to be publicly condemned for even speaking to a woman, what will the King do when the Princess of France (Kate Hurster) arrives?

No sooner do they sign the corrected contract than four women conveniently arrive at court: the Princess and her ladies—Rosaline (Stephanie Beatriz), Maria (Tiffany Rachelle Stewart), and Katherine (Christine Albright)—are accompanied by Boyet, an attending Lord who is played here by a woman (Robin Goodrin Nordli) as a cocktail-swilling chaperone.

Love’s Labor’s Lost by William Shakespeare at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival – directed by Shana Cooper – Los Angeles Theater Review by Tony Frankel

To say that it is a shameful coincidence that these four male friends should find mutual attraction in the ladies is an understatement. Due to the King’s decree, the maids are forced to camp in the fields outside of court, but that does not stop the fellows, amusingly portrayed as prep-school buddies, from sending epistles to their loves. As a cheap plot device, the letters end up in unintended hands. Now, neither audience nor character can figure out the bewildering goings on. (Rumor has it that Shakespeare is writing a new play titled Romeo and Juliet that uses the same contrivance—I’m telling you, this Bard has no future.)

Now read…this…next…part…slowly: A confoundingly confusing subplot, if one can name it as such, involves the king’s clown Costard (a not-so-funny Jonathan Haugen), who loves the milkmaid Jacquenetta (the comely Gina Daniels), who is lusted after by Don Armado (a distinctive and wondrous Jack Willis), who has custody of Costard, who has broken the king’s edict, which is renounced by the boys, who dress up like Russians to woo the girls, who pretend to be each other by wearing a tiny mask (I don’t think so!), all of whom are presented a showing of the “Nine Worthies” (or valiant warriors) by comic relief characters—Nathaniel (Charles Robinson, lacking in comic timing), Holofernes (witty Michael Winters) and Armado’s servant Moth (Emily Sophia Knapp)—and this is the rat, that ate the malt, that lay in the house that Will built!

Love’s Labor’s Lost by William Shakespeare at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival – directed by Shana Cooper – Los Angeles Theater Review by Tony Frankel

Very near the end of a long midsummer night’s heat, it is announced that the Princess’s father has died, bringing a bittersweet somberness as newly attached lovers are torn asunder. It is the first time in the play that we actually see the lovers take action regarding their admiration for each other, something that was sorely missing until then. Under Marcus Doshi’s exquisite lighting, fantasy-colored petals fall to the stage in purples and pinks, landing on a bed of rich green (scenic design by Christopher Acebo). It is at this moment that Shakespeare’s sonnets become fully-realized by the truly heartrending music of Paul James Prendergast. As the lovers part, master interpreter and performer Gregory Linington, as Berowne, simply breaks our hearts as he bids his love adieu.

You will leave the theatre with tears in your eyes, not just due to the lovely beauty of the final image, but because you are freed from trying to figure out the convoluted plot by a writer whose career now appears shaky at best.

photos by T. Charles Erickson and Jenny Graham

Love’s Labor’s Lost
Oregon Shakespeare Festival
ends on October 9, 2011
for tickets, call 800.219.8161 or visit OSF

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