By William Shakespeare
Directed by Emily Burns
Set & Costume by Joanna Scotcher
Composer Paul Englishby
Royal Shakespeare Company
Royal Shakespeare Theatre
Stratford-upon-Avon
Thursday 25th April 2024 13.15
CAST
Jack Bardoe- Don Armado
Brandon Bassir – Dumaine
Melanie-Joyce Bermudez – Princess
Jeffrey Chekhai- Mercade & Ensemble
Iskandar Eaton – Moth
Nathan Foad – Costard
Sarita Gabony – Maria
Tony Gardner – Holoferness
Shailan Gohil – Ensemble
Amy Griffiths – Katherine
Ioanna Kimbook – RosalineKok-Hwa Lie– Dull understudy Jeffrey Chekhai
Jordan Metcalfe – Boyet
Tika Mi’tamir – ensemble
Abiola Owokoniran – Ferdinand
Marienella Phillips – Jaquenetta
Eric Stroud – Longaville
Luke Thompson – Berowne
Jamie Tyler – Ensemble
So here we are, the first Shakespeare play in the new artistic directorship of Daniel Evans and Tamara Harvey. Why this one? Well, it hasn’t been done for ten years at the RSC, and was one of the first in their run through the entire canon. Except they forgot about Pericles which will be coming later in the year. It was about due.
The consensus used to be that this is a (considerably) lesser play. Having said that, Christopher Luscombe at the RSC did a truly first rate version in 2014, with Edward Bennett as Berowne and Michelle Terry as Rosaline. It was set in September 1914, and twinned with Love’s Labour’s Won set in December 1918, and is referred to as ‘the Downton Abbey’ version. Love’s Labour’s Won is the famously lost play, which Luscombe and the RSC decided was actually another name for Much Ado About Nothing. That twinned production was revived by the RSC in 2016 at Chichester with Lisa Dillon taking over as Rosaline, and it was even better. However, then the Wanamaker Playhouse version in 2018 was way beyond dire.
The director Emily Burns and lead actor Luke Thompson spoke to The Sunday Times in March. The article quotes some negatives from the past, including Roger Ebert who called it probably the weakest of all Shakespeare plays. That would have been confirmed if he’d seen the Wanamaker version.
Luke Thompson felt it under-rated: It’s often talked about as this clunkier, more obscure Much Ado About Nothing … but it feels like a more subversive play. All of the comedy is about this anxiety which feels quite serious and modern: how do I spend my time to make it worthwhile on this planet.
Sunday Times, 17 March 2024
It’s one of Michael Billington’s 101 Greatest Plays. That’s a list that excludes A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In the introduction to the RSC text of the play, Jonathan Bate says:
Love’s Labour’s Lost is a play for Shakespeare connoisseurs. It is a great feat of linguistic sophistication on the theme of the inadequacy of linguistic sophistication. It is full of poetry – and mockery of poetry. Its preposterous academic posturing is either hilarious or incomprehensible, according to the disposition of the listener. Some of its jokes and puns are now so obscure that a modern audience frequently finds itself in the position of Dull – listening in bemusement.
It’s also cited as one of the rudest plays. Some like the archery scene (here golf) is reasonably transparent today. Some requires a degree of erudition on double meanings in Shakespeare’s time.
The chronology could be endlessly disputed but it was around by 1594-1595 (some think it earlier), which in most lists puts it right after Two Gentlemen of Verona (a weaker play for most) but before A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1595-6) and Much Ado About Nothing (1598-99). In that order you can see ‘The Nine Worthies’ play within a play as an early bash at Pyramus and Thisbe (definitely how it’s played in this version), and the masked confusion plus the Berowne / Rosaline interaction as a warm up for Benedick and Beatrice. Then we have Berowne concealed to listen to the other three revealing they’ve written to the women, just as Benedick is concealed to be misled by the plotters. It supports that 2014 RSC double play which links Love’s Labour’s Lost and Much Ado.
The quarto publication in 1597 / 8 shows it as revised by William Shakespeare, suggesting the earlier edition was changed. Possibly because as he matured as a writer he improved it, or most likely that he updated the comedy references to something current. Navarre was an interesting choice. Henri de Bourbon (later Henri IV) was King of Navarre from 1572 to 1589, when he became King of France. He was also raised as a Protestant and tried to straddle the wars of religion in France. I wonder if the 1598 revisions were connected to Henri’s Edict of Nantes in April that year which ended the conflict. The Duc de Biron was a real nobleman in Henri’s court. The OUP Complete Works (Wells & Taylor) calls the character ‘Biron.’ The Folio spelling is ‘Berowne.’ All the productions I’ve seen use ‘Berowne’ in the programme as do the RSC and Folio Society texts.
Our Thursday afternoon started about ten minutes late. They were waiting for a very large school party in the upper gallery. I have every sympathy – road closures and diversions around Stratford make timing a very tricky business. As so often when a play goes for action and comedy, a school party’s surprise, laughter and enthusiasm is a major plus for the actors. Jack Bardoe as Don Armado benefitted in particular. They loved his every move and gesture.
The setting for this production is a luxury resort (‘Navarre’) on a Pacific Island. All the pre-publicity and the programme make it clear that the King and his three disciples are billionaire ‘Tech bro-celebrities’ – think Elon Musk, Mark Zukerburg et al. They don’t ever actually say that, but the point is taken.
They also start off with The Princess (Melanie-Joyce Bermudez) addressing a world conference in the Hawaiian language on behalf of her father (with translation above). The Pacific setting is maintained.
So Ferdinand, The King of Navarre, has made it a condition that for three years, the disciples (Longaville, Dumaine and Berowne) must speak to no women, fast regularly, sleep no more than three hours and study. They sign up to this monastic regime … post the dissolution of the monasteries by Queen Elizabeth’s dad, monastic rules were intrinsically funny. On the Pacific resort of Navarre this retreat means consigning their cell phones to a basket.
The problem is the visit of the Princess of France and her entourage of three ladies (Rosaline, Catherine, Maria) who will take the lads’ eyes. In one of the difficult bits nowadays there are discussions about Aquitaine which could go to Navarre in payment of a debt. Not a chapter of history anyone would be familiar with. Here they keep the lines and plough on. The women have their chamberlain (here solicitor), Boyet. They are not allowed into the resort but have to reside ‘in the field’. I bet it’d be a nice tent.
Pity the poor guys. Boyet knows these four women.
Boyet:
The tongues of mocking wenches are as keen
As is the razor’s edge invisible
Cutting a smaller hair than may be seen;
Above the sense of sense, so sensible
Seemeth their conference. Their conceits have
wings
Fleeter than arrows, bullets, wind, thought, swifter
things.
That’s the main plot, but then we have the other characters. In the quarto, Don Armado, a Spanish knight is marked ‘The Braggart’ and Holoferness ‘The Pedant.’ e.g., in Act 5 Scene 2, the direction is “Enter Braggart (Armado as Hector).
I’m not sure Holoferness’s status in this version, something like resort manager. Don Armado is another guest. The sub plot is that Don Armado is enamoured of Jaquenetta (here a resort employee). Costard is another employee, and also secretly involved with Jaquenetta.
Don Armado (Jack Bardoe) is a HUGE character and transformed from knight to a champion Spanish tennis player in red and yellow with Espana on his back. He had our school parties in such hysterics with antics with his shorts, cap and tennis racquet (wonderful to hear their laughter) that his long wordless entry scene was probably extended … the Bard would have approved. If you’re getting the laughs, milk them. When he did a friendly Hispanic kiss (on the lips) to Costard, the concerted ‘Yeurgh!’ from dozens of teenagers was the icing on the cake.
One review mentioned Manuel from Fawlty Towers. Nothing like him, except a Spanish accent, and that’s in the text. A Spanish tennis star works (Rafael Nadal?). According to studies of the play, Walter Raleigh may have inspired the original.
A scene where Holoferness and Don Armado converse with Holoferness (Tony Gardner) commenting on pronunciation is the best I’ve seen it. We used to do extracts from Shakespeare on language and I don’t know how we missed doing this scene.
We’re not going to have archery and a hunt (or croquet as in 2014) so we have golf. The whole audience ducked when the Princess took her swing. The women arrive in a golf cart (with Rolls Royce grill) driven by Boyet.
There is considerable driving business to get it off stage, the terror of those in front rows (the second time the RSC has done this with vehicles recently).
The “overhearing” scene exploits the fabulous set. Luke Thompson as Berowne is up a palm tree. The others appear and the revolving set rotates slowly and shows the men hanging over the wall by their fingertips. Not for the first time, I thought they knew the 2014 production. In Love’s Labour’s Won, Benedick overhears from the top of a Christmas Tree.
The masks
Masks are always a willing suspension of disbelief … one of the play’s many links to Much Ado About Nothing. The task for a modern version is thinking of a way of doing it. I loved the solution here.
The four women are on sun beds with face cream and cucumber eye masks. That’s how they mask themselves – with cosmetic face masks (actually only three blobs of white). Then the men are supposed to be disguised as Muscovites, which is usually an excuse for false beards and a Cossack dance. In 2024, there’s nothing amusing about Russian soldiers. So here they dress in full medieval armour with visors and clank about. They do a boy band routine on The Backstreet Boys’ I Want It That Way.
Then the women have the presents from the men to switch around and cause confusion. Here they’re in the sort of gift bags you get at award ceremonies, and Rosaline’s present of jewels, when held up is very funny indeed.
A word for Jordan Metcalfe as Boyet. He is superb throughout, but also features in one of the funniest parts of the play getting stuck between Berowne and Rosaline. He can’t extricate himself, and when he does falls into a perfect splits. It actually echoes Rosie Sheehy getting stuck as Puck in the RSC’s 2024 version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but is no less funny for that.
The Worthies
The play within a play is rather a pageant, masque or tableaux within a play. Shakespeare liked to have a go at the competition. The Mousetrap in Hamlet lampoons a declamatory style of his rivals. Pyramus & Thisbe has a go at amateur guild productions which had taken place as the mystery plays. The Coventry Cycle lasted until 1579, leading to the suggestion that a young Shakespeare may have seen it. Twenty miles from Stratford to Coventry (and that’s via the M40, not as the crow flies)? It’s possible, especially as his father was involved in the Stratford guilds. The boy players at law schools get a mention. Masques were popular in the great country houses, and as we know Shakespeare’s company played at least at Wilton House near Salisbury, they were a competing entertainment.
The Nine Worthies were grouped in threes. The Pagans: Hector, Alexander The Great, Julius Caesar. The Jews: Joshua, David, Judas Maccabee and The Christians: King Arthur, Charlemagne, Godfrey of Bouillon. Shakespeare added Hercules and Pompey The Great, which indicates that he was not above updating obscure references to more popular ones!
Pompey, played by Costard, is very much like Wall in Pyramus and Thisbe here. During this we get the announcement that Jaquenetta is pregnant with Costard pointing the finger at Don Armado, ‘The Braggart.’
Costard: The poor wench is cast away. She’s quick, the child brags in her belly already. ‘Tis yours.
This leads into a full physical fight between Costard and Armado, rolling all over the place until …
In the end
The ending is one of the best features of the play. In the middle of the high farce as the Worthies scene breaks down, a messenger, Mercade (Jeffrey Chekhai), arrives. He has grave news. The King is dead. The Princess is now the Queen. The whole mood turns upside down. There are key speeches from Ferdinand and The Princess.
On our afternoon, those speeches were pretty much ruined. There was awful tinkling New Age music during them. I was perplexed. Who on Earth would put such crass music under vital speeches? It often happens though. And why was it coming from the back speakers behind us? The music had been live, Hawaiian, and from the front before. A mobile phone? No, it couldn’t be. It went on and on and on. Karen, being of a more curious disposition turned round. Yes, it was a fucking mobile phone. Not from the school kids either – they’d have known how to turn it off which the adult perpetrator couldn’t do. It was at such a vital and poignant moment. Had it been in a comedy scene, all the comic roles would have known how to deal with it, and as handing in mobile phones had started the play, would have improvised. Better, one of them could have leapt from the stage and hopefully given the phone owner the problem of extricating a mobile phone from one’s arse. Any of the four men or the four women could have handled it earlier too. But this was the very worst point for it. All they could do was go on with the speeches and hope for it to stop.
Such a shame, because the actual ending was a Hawaiian song, sung by Marienella Phillips, who had played Jaquenetta, and Jeffrey Chekhai, who had played Mercade (AND understudied the absent Dull). The Princess moved through the cast, inclining her head to each. The voices soared. It was extraordinary and genuinely moving, in spite of the appalling mobile phone destroying their previous speeches.
Verse
Those who rate the play highly always cite the quality of the verse, with Berowne getting the best share of it. Luke Thompson is the star name (because of Bridgerton) but he’s served his Shakespeare apprenticeship at the Globe and the Almeida. His verse speaking is to my taste- he has thought about every line and how to bring meaning to it with pauses and timing. It’s not the rolling recitation mode at all, though there are choices on vinyl records of a more traditional style.
Music
As well as the memorable closing piece, there is a Hawaiian style throughout, and a welcome return of interval music:
Over the years we loved the pre-shows at the RSC. Let’s hope they will return too.
Overall
It can be a hard play. From Fiona Mountford’s review of this production:
Other sections of Love’s Labour’s Lost containing some of the densest and most abstruse lines in the canon, are the sort of thing that gives Shakespearean “comedy” a bad name. The so-called comic characters, headed by flamboyant Spaniard Don Armado (Jack Bardoe), can prove a gruelling endurance test and hard as Burns tries to lighten the verbal load with an abundance of extravagant gestures and silly voices, the audience remained benignly bewildered in these scenes. Yet no matter, as the fault for this lies squarely with Shakespeare himself. The confidence of Burns’s vision and the easy anchoring assurance of Thompson’s performance triumph and Bermudez achieves a sombre majesty at the conclusion’s sad news, which shows up the previous youthful high jinx for the larksome folly that they were.
‘Benignly bewildered’ is a perfect choice of phrase. There is an over-whelming four star consensus. I’m getting generous with stars but it’s hard to see why you’d take one off the five, except that both of us are in the ‘lesser play’ camp rather than the ‘exquisite poetry’ camp, so I think the intrinsic play (as Fiona Mountford says “The fault for this lies squarely with Shakespeare himself”) is an incredible struggle to get to four stars. It does easily.
This is the first RSC production in years with no gender switching. It’s also missing the actor signing Shakespeare’s words and there’s no one in a wheelchair. I hope this is a sign of the new regime. However, on reflection, there are already five good female roles. You couldn’t switch the four main men, Costard and Armado are both the candidates for Jaquenetta’s pregnancy, and Boyet has to comment on women. However, you probably could switch Moth, Dull or Mercade and they didn’t.
*****
WHAT THE CRITICS SAID
But where the physical comedy is crassly overplayed through minor characters, the central lovestruck men, and smartly rejecting women, hit the perfect tone. Burns’ achievement is in the pitch perfect physical comedy here, as well as making the arcane wordplay accessible (on the whole) while preserving the sudden, cloud-parting poetry of the play.
Arifa Akbar, The Guardian
The framing device is really just a canny means to predictable ends, which is to make us wonder whether anything has changed between the sexes, viz youthful, awkward wooing, and the age-old spectacle of male inadequacy. Burns’ production is attentive to the language without being daunted by it – there are judicious edits and fresh, anachronistic ad-libs. Aside from being superbly cast, it has terrific tonal certainty; even when some abstruse word-play gets aired, it feels grounded in relatable attitudes.
Domenic Cavendish, The Telegraph
5 star
What’s On Stage *****
4 star
Arifa Akbar, The Guardian ****
Domenic Cavendish, The Telegraph ****
Clive Davis, The Times ****
Suzi Feay, Financial Times ****
Fiona Mountford, the i ****Simon Tavener, The Reviews Hub ****
Graham Wyles, Stage Talk, ****
Holly O’Mahoney, The Stage ****
All That Dazzles ****
Elliot, Theatre & Tonic ****
3 star
Libby Purves, Theatre Cat ***
LINKS ON THIS BLOG
- Love’s Labour’s Lost– RSC 2014
- Love’s Labour’s Lost– RSC 2016 revival, at Chichester
- Love’s Labour’s Lost, Wanamaker Playhouse, 2018
- Love’s Labour’s Lost, RSC 2024
EMILY BURNS
Jack Absolute Flies again, National Theatre 2022 (Director)
Romeo & Juliet National Theatre 2021 streamed (Associate Director)
LUKE THOMPSON
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Globe 2013 (Lysander)
The Broken Heart by John Ford, Wanamaker Playhouse
Julius Caesar, The Globe 2014 (Mark Antony)
Misbehaviour (film)
Bridgerton (TV Series)
TONY GARDNER
The Lie, by Florian Zeller, Menier Chocolate Factory, 2017
SHAILAN GOHIL
Jack Absolute Flies again, National Theatre 2022
IONNA KIMBOOK
Much Ado About Nothing, National Theatre 2022 (Hero)
MELANIE JOYCE-BERMUDEZ
King Lear, Branagh Company, 2023 (Regan)
JORDAN METCALFE
Jack Absolute Flies again, National Theatre 2022
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