LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST. To 15 November.

Kingston.

LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST
by William Shakespeare.

Rose Theatre To 15 November 2008.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Wed, Thu, Sat 2.30pm.
Audio-described 1 Nov 2.30pm (+Touch Tour 1pm).
Runs 3hr One interval.

TICKETS: 0871 230 1552.
www.rosetheatrekingston.org
Review: Timothy Ramsden 28 October.

Shakespearean comedy, linguistic playfulness and humanity clearly displayed.
In this play Shakespeare revels in the linguistic fantastications of his day. Peter Hall’s Rose revival may be visually sparse (Berowne up a metal ladder is hardly the same as someone hiding in a tree). But its plainness shows characters revealing themselves through use of language. “Expression is the dress of thought”, as for Pope, and the play shows how it can fall short when pretension and attempts to impress must give way to humanity.

For all his verbal pirouettes, Shakespeare gives the loudest laugh and the truest feeling to verbal reticence. The phlegmatic constable may be Dull, first of the author’s police simpletons, but he puts a storm of verbiage in its place with just four words. And when lordly cleverness sinks to supercilious sneering, an amateur performer ticks the offenders off with dignified simplicity.

There’s pretension from the opening, in the King of Navarre’s self-conscious speech, and his followers’ pompous gesture accompanying their oath. Except Finbar Lynch’s Berowne, with his doubts about the scholarly detachment that’s immediately undermined by the arrival of the French Princess and her ladies.

Hall’s production is most moving in the second half, after pretences and disguises have been discovered and mocked, the lords’ arrogance to others seeming a mean reaction to their own humiliation. The locals join innocently in the verbal fun, not least Greg Haiste’s genially comic Costard with his misunderstandings and extended pronunciation of the play’s longest word.

Then there’s Ella Smith’s double-cream Jacquenetta, Kevin Trainor’s Moth introducing a beautiful song with Celtic-inflected melody, and Michael Mears’ ever-precise attendant to the ladies. If these ladies seem less interesting, it may be Hall focuses more on male follies.

Inkhorn affectations affect the scholarly bourgeois, particularly William Chubb’s pedagogue Holofernes, drawing out every learned sound or Latin syllable, and his rival, the fantastical Spaniard Don Adriano.

Peter Bowles wisely eschews a Spanish accent, concentrating instead on a self-importance (Bowles’ inventive performance delights in the details of Armado’s absurdity) that's also curiously sympathetic – like so much in this play, whose ultimate move to the sadness beneath mortal endeavours is well-charted in this strong production.

King of Navarre: Dan Freedenburgh.
Longaville: Nicholas Bishop.
Dumaine: Nick Barber.
Berowne: Finbar Lynch.
Dull: Peter Gordon.
Costard: Greg Haiste.
Don Adriano de Armado: Peter Bowles.
Moth: Kevin Trainor.
Jacquenetta: Ella Smith.
Princess of France: Rachel Pickup.
Boyet: Michael Mears.
Maria: Nelly Harker.
Katherine: Sally Scott.
Rosaline: Susie Trayling.
Holofernes: William Chubb.
Sir Nathaniel/Forester/Mercade: Paul Bentall.

Director: Peter Hall.
Designer/Costume: Christopher Woods.
Lighting: James Whiteside.
Sound: Gregory Clarke.
Music: Mick Sands.
Movement: Jackie Snow.
Associate director: Cordelia Monsey.

2008-10-30 03:59:42