Royal Shakespeare Company: Love's Labour's Lost (2015) User Reviews

Labour of love

[TheLittleSongbird · 9/10 · 15 October 2021]

'Love's Labour's Lost' is not one of "The Bard" William Shakespeare's best or most accessible plays despite being one of Shakespeare's shortest. Mostly for all that wordplay and dialogue, difficult to remember and not always easy to follow. It is a lot of fun to watch though and one of the most striking aspects of it is the very meaty character of Berowne, so it does deserve to be better known like many of Shakespeare's lesser known plays.

Something that is obvious in this wonderful 2015 production from the Royal Shakespeare Company. The company varied with their live transmission productions from the past slightly over a decade or so, this production of 'Love's Labour's Lost' is one of the best, one of the most entertaining, one of the most accessible (without trying to do too much or trying too hard) and one of the most visually beautiful. It is wonderful and very nearly perfect.

Only let down by, for my tastes, the pageant being too sophisticated and civilised, when it could have afforded to have gone all out, been more humour laden and more deliberately clumsy.

Everything else succeeds brilliantly. The production values are absolutely beautiful and with nothing distasteful about them, while not traditional there is a very clear sense of time and place (Summer 1914) and there is nothing ugly about it. Nigel Hess' music is sumptuous and spirited, a vast majority of the time working absolutely beautifully apart from when it contributed to the pageant being not quite my idea of what it should be.

The comedic elements are very funny and the more dramatic ones touching, the entertainment value is relentless but the play's heart is also never lost. They are handled beautifully individually and are perfectly balanced together with one not being favoured over the other. Not easy to do with the wordplay not always being interesting in the play. The pace is exuberant and never lets up.

Character interaction is witty and affecting and the production does a great job making the story accessible without doing anything to over complicate it. Again not easy to do when the story is not always being easy to follow. All the performances are right on the money, Edward Bennett has the most interesting character and attacks him with gusto.

In conclusion, wonderful. 9/10.

Nearly perfect

[wildlives-83550 · 9/10 · 24 March 2024]

I've seen five productions of LLL now and am becoming quite fond of it. The keys to enjoying it seem to be if the actors manage the language well (slowly enough so we can catch everything, but with the required relish), if the farcical attitude is emphasized, and if the women can be brought to the forefront as much as the men, who have more lines and aren't as inherently funny. This version hits all those marks splendidly. Every character was cherished by the director and beautifully performed by the actor. Berowne was acted as more of a pompous ass than in other productions, right from the beginning, without making him unlikable. Holofernes was the best that I've seen; his physicality and overacting made him lovable. Moth was perfect as a not too-too young boy. The Russians scene was excellent, on a par with what is still my favorite, the Jeremy Brett version back in 1975.

My only quibble was with the Worthies section, where the director apparently decided not to mention the four suitors' descent into cruelty: all of the audience comments were cut, including the entire Judas scene. This of course is one of the problems with the play itself, and I can understand thinking that the story might work better without it. But one other change did upset me: the "Daisies pied" song was changed, with some wording cut and new lines added. The song was very well done, but still, such a classic deserves to be heard as it was meant to be.

Those two quibbles, though, were balanced by a strong emphasis on the closing scene where the ladies talk sense into the men. Drawing out this scene, which was done almost unnoticeably, helped to cushion the shock of the abrupt tonal change of the king's death.

This was a terrific production, making me laugh out loud in some places, and happy to applaud along with the audience after several scenes and songs. Well cast, well directed, and well performed - a triumph!