William Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Shakespeare’s Globe (London) on tour, by Heidi Holder

Left to right: Jack Farthing (Dumaine), William Mannering (Longaville), Philip Cumbus (Ferdinand) and Trystan Gravelle, (Berowne) in Love's Labour's Lost, Shakespeare's Globe on Tour. Photo John Haynes.

Massachusetts International Festival of the Arts at The War Memorial Auditorium, Holyoke, MA

December 3rd, 2009

Directed by Dominic Dromgoole
Designed by Jonathan Fensom

Music Composed by Claire van Kampen

Cast
Jade Anouka – Maria
Philip Cumbus – Ferdinand
Seroca Davis – Moth
Jack Farthing – Dumaine
Patrick Godfrey – Sir Nathaniel
Christopher Godwin – Holofernes
Trystan Gravelle – Berowne
William Mannering – Longaville
Fergal McElherron – Costard
Rhiannon Oliver – Jacquenetta
Thomasin Rand – Rosaline
Paul Ready Don – Armado
Siân Robins-Grace – Katherine
Tom Stuart – Boyet
Michelle Terry – Princess of France
Andrew Vincent – Dull

Musicians Nick Perry, George Bartle, David Hatcher, Arngeir Hauksson, Claire McIntyre, Benjamin Narvey

 

Love's Labour's Lost, one of Shakespeare’s earliest comedies, has been considered by critics particularly suitable for a courtly audience; indeed, it was once staged for Queen Elizabeth as a Christmas entertainment. With its depiction of verbal sparring among the nobility and its emphasis on notions of rank and wit, this comedy is designed to delight (and flatter) a refined and educated audience. Such a courtly audience vanished, of course, long ago, and director Dominic Dromgoole is left with us, motley contemporaries ranging from academics through theaterphiles to puzzled high school students. And he has decided to please contemporary tastes by underscoring all the play’s silliness—in the process making Shakespeare’s nobles decidedly less elevated creatures than they appear in the text. The distance between the King of Navarre and the Princess of France on the one hand, and the rustic Costard and braggart Don Adriano on the other, is certainly shorter.

Read the full review on The Berkshire Review for the Arts