LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST To 7 October.
London.
LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST
by William Shakespeare.
Shakespeare’s Globe In rep to 7 October 2007.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat 2pm Sun 6.30pm Mat 1pm 7 Oct 4pm.
Audio-described 5 August 1pm.
Runs 3hr One interval.
TICKETS: 020 7401 9919/020 7087 7398.
www.shakespeares-globe.org
Review: Timothy Ramsden 15 July.
Revealing the Old Grey Doe beneath the Haut Credo.
There’s much intrigue, business and dialogue in this early Shakespeare comedy, but little by way of a story. Dominic Dromgoole’s revival binds the script’s delight in styles of language with essential human impulses, making it a play about sex and death.
Language first; there’s the formal agreement of the four young noblemen who swear to devote themselves to three years’ study and the politeness of the four young ladies whose arrival clearly sounds the knell for those studious vows. There’s the limited expression of locals like Costard, who assimilates unfamiliar words for a tip into his vocabulary as words for the different value coins he’s given.
Then there’s the fustian of the pedantic Holofernes and his conversational companion, Sir Nathaniel the curate, for whom English and Latin are a kind of exclusive property, here paring at one point to a series of hums and haws expertly handled by Christopher Godwin and John Bett.
Amid this, there’s the longest word heard on stage until Mary Poppins’ “Supercalifrag” etc came along, the foreign bombast of Armado and the irony that the courtiers express their loves in secret letters progressively revealed until the last one’s shown-up through rural illiteracy.
All this is tightly linked to the rutting and mating impulses that lie beneath cloaks of respectability. Enclosing part of the Groundlings’ standing-places as a zigzag extension to the stage, Dromgoole opens with a couple of deer’s mating ritual. And, with verbal expression merely dressing naked thoughts, it's clear that men and women are propelled by the same desires.
As soon as she can throw-off the ladylike gentility required in her servant's presence, the Princess of France leads her companions in playful pleasure, while Sir Nathaniel reveals a bare backside beneath his clerical robes during the Nine Worthies’ Pageant. This amateur performance, prefiguring the Dream’s ‘Pyramus and Thisbe’, is another form of pretension in its ambitious portrayals of classical heroes.
Only one thing overrules sex, and that’s death, which brings new seriousness, culminating in the final song emphasising the cyclical necessity of spring and winter: heat and desire, cold and death, all finely interwoven.
Ferdinand King of Navarre: Kobna Holdbrook-Smith.
Berowne: Trystan Gravelle.
Longaville: William Mannering.
Dumaine: David Oakes.
The Princess of France: Michelle Terry.
Rosaline: Gemma Arterton.
Maria: Cush Jumbo.
Katherine: Oona Chaplin.
Boyet: Paul Rider.
Don Adriano de Armado: Timothy Walker.
Moth: Seroca Davis.
Holofernes: Christopher Godwin.
Sir Nathaniel: John Bett.
Dull: Andrew Vincent.
Costard: Joe Caffrey.
Jaquenetta: Rhiannon Oliver.
Director: Dominic Dromgoole.
Designer: Jonathan Fensom.
Composer: Claire van Kampen.
Musical Director: Sarah Humphrys.
Choreographer: Sian Williams.
Voice coach: Charmian Hoare.
Puppet director: Steve Tiplady.
Fight director: Renny Krupinski.
Fencing consultant: Phillip Stafford.
Text work: Giles Block.
2007-07-20 00:17:56