At first glance the storyline of Shakespeare’s romantic comedy Love’s Labour’s Lost, one of his earliest works, may seem simple yet from the moment King Ferdinand of Navarre (Jordin Hall) takes centre stage the Stratford Festival company reveals its texturally rich complexities.
Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives,
Live register’d upon our brazen tombs
And then grace us in the disgrace of death;
When, spite of cormorant devouring Time;
The endeavour of this present breath may buy
That endeavour of this present breath may buy
That honour which shall bate his scythe’s keen edge
And make us heirs of all eternity. – Act 1, Scene 1.
The comedic core indeed focuses on the young monarch and his three companions eschewing women’s company for three years in favour of philosophical studies and ensuing hilarious consequences courtesy of the Princess of France (Celia Aloma) and her three ladies-in-waiting’s arrival on a diplomatic mission.
Yet that magnificent opening regal soliloquy, steeped in tragic foreboding and personal sensibility, demonstrates eloquently the play’s underlying depth. One moment the lovelorn companions cast puns and rhyming couplets about with wild humorous abandon. Then suddenly the quartet is transformed into seemingly more rational philosophers pondering all manner of life beyond their playful and witty word games dotting the landscape of their own realities.
At less than two hours, with no intermission, director Peter Pasyk moves the proceedings along in a wonderfully fast paced manner, delighting the opening night audience by drawing out numerous crowd-pleasing performances from his gifted cast.
His assertion that the play’s verbal dexterity is “an actor’s play … requiring top talent and technique” comes to fruition and his placement of the characters in a modern setting is spot-on as the essence of the production is love, which is universal irrespective of the time frame.
As Ferdinand, Hall delightfully captures both the king’s intellectual and conversely romantic sides and, while a lover of the spoken word, is completely oblivious to the obvious reality that he is a dreadful writer.
Aloma brings to the fore the French Princess’s intelligence, love of living and sudden maturity with strength and believability, while also a pleasure to behold when she mockingly matches wits with her youthful counterpart from Navarre.
In the king’s court Tyrone Savage brings Berowne to life with a sizzle as a highly intelligent and rather talkative lord, initially skeptical of Ferdinand’s plan and surprisingly taken aback with the cleverness and the complexities of one of the princess’s courtly friends Rosaline (Amaka Umeh), with whom he falls in love.
Chanakya Mukherjee is the perfect fit as Dumaine, the youngest of the king’s three lords who is beset with a variety of issues including not being able to grow a beard, a tad on the dim side and like others in the court, a wretched poet who tortures his love interest Katherine (Elizabeth Adams) with his awful verse.
Rounding out the group in fine style is Chris Mejaki’s well-realized Longaville who towers over Dumaine and enjoys any chance he can get to mock the over-confident Berowne. Like his three contemporaries he offers up some dreadfully unreadable poetry – clearly an expected liability in his quest for love – to his sudden infatuation Maria (Qianna MacGilchrist).
Aloma, Umeh, MacGilchrist and Adams excel as the Princess and ladies-in-waiting, strong-willed, vibrant and more than a match for their smitten male contemporaries.
Steve Ross supplies a bewilderingly sly look as the princess’s gossipy counsellor Boyet, an older gent keen on joining the witty banter at the drop of a hat and equally pleased with joining the Navarre lords in deriding the bizarre Nine Worthies pageant, staged by Gordon S. Miller’s spectacularly overdressed dandy/braggart Don Armado. The event supposedly showcasing the masculine prowess of biblical, historical and mythological characters is instead, and to great effect, highlighted by Miller’s never-ending wordiness that leads nowhere and his entrance in an outrageously flamboyant chariot that would have embarrassed Charlton Heston’s Ben Hur into a terminal state of shock.
Pasyk cleverly integrates some truly outlandishly clever sequences including a disco-infused solo dance by a uniformed officer, firefighters bumping and grinding to the sounds of the 70s’ club scene and a choral entry featuring other cast members like Hannah Wigglesworth (Armado’s pregnant love interest Jaquenetta) and some classy guitar licks by Christo Graham (Armado’s witty pageboy Moth).
Add these talented thespians to the mix and one has the ideal cast proving without doubt Love’s Labour’s Lost is not a lesser work of the Bard’s as some critics and academics of the past have so incorrectly written:
- Wahsontí:io Kirby – the court swain Costard who loves words related to currency.
- Michael Spencer-Davis as the parson/schoolteacher Holofernes known for his abundance of alliterations.
- Matthew Kabwe, the local curate Nathaniel and Holofernes admirer.
- Jane Spidell’s Dull, never afraid to admit she’s unaccustomed to the use of large words.
- Andrew Robinson, as the French court’s messenger who brings word of the King of France’s death.
- Tyler Rive in the role of Forester, gallantry trying to play the princess’ games of wit.
- Hilary Adams as a royal attendant.
Pasyk’s creative team are set designer Julie Fox, costume designer Sim Suzer, lighting designer Arun Srinivasan, composer and sound designer Thomas Ryder Payne, supervising fight director Geoff Scovell and Choreographer Stephen Cota.
Already presented with a full slate of top-notch entertainment, the audience – particularly those unfamiliar with much of Shakespeare’s language – is offered the added bonus of figuring out some oddities, for example passed means spoken, envious is used as malicious, lie is actually to reside and there are a host of others to sort out.
While most critics have come around to the greatness of the work, even as late as 2000, the late 1974 Pulitzer Prize winning film critic Roger Ebert was describing Love’s Labour’s Lost as “probably the weakest of Shakespeare’s plays” in his review.
Then again, one might excuse him as his critique was of a truly odd musical film version of the play directed and co-written by acclaimed Kenneth Branagh that owed considerably more to film director/choreographer Busbey Berkely and Hollywood’s Golden Era than to William Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Era.
What one gets at the Studio Theatre is the real deal until Oct. 1, gloriously served up on a silver platter by a skilled director and first-rate acting/creative company.
