Love’s Labour’s Lost

By William Shakespeare, directed by Paul Barnes
Great River Shakespeare Festival (July 7, 2009)

In many ways, Love’s Labour’s Lost may be a risky play for Great River Shakespeare Festival to take on. Shakespeare’s verbal gymnastics must hold the audience because there is little in the way of action or plot. Small, familiar plot devices serve merely as diversions: mixed up letters, love sonnets that fall into the wrong hands, a party where the revelers are masked, for example. But this production stands strongly on its verse, and Shakespeare’s verbal power and this company’s skill and charisma rise to the occasion and make Love’s Labour’s Lost a rousing success.

Chris Mixon (top) as Berowne and Andrew Carlson as Longaville in the GRSF production of Love’s Labour’s Lost

Love’s Labour’s Lost could be a Shakespeare skeptic’s worst nightmare: a play with seemingly endless Shakespearian speeches: no murders, no fights, no plotting for power, no forbidden love. And yet even a skeptic could quickly be drawn into the language of this production. Nearly all the dialog is in verse, and while the audience isn’t likely to recognize the sonnets and other poetry forms as they fly by, the incessant rhymes serve as constant reminders that the speeches and word play are largely constructions that allow the speakers to admire their own voices and their own wit. The sonneteers labor at their love with pen and tongue, yet they are more in love with themselves and their words than with the supposed objects of their affection.

At first blush, the GRSF staging of Love’s Labour’s Lost suggests the play will be a romp in the park. A lush green grass covers the center circle of the stage, and a simulated tree with pastel colored parasols for branches provides a fanciful pastoral setting. (And in bit of even more fancy, the parasols open early in the play and later close when the pastoral sporting must be set aside).

But while the King of Navarre and his court do their best to maintain their mirth and lover’s play, the seriousness of death surrounds the play. The bare, cold staging that surrounds the green of Navarre’s garden reminds the audience of the limits of play. The persistence of death is further reinforced by an interesting portrayal of the ill King of France personally handing his daughter the papers that she is to deliver to Navarre. This exchange happens quickly, in a pantomime that takes place as part of a sequence of song and character introductions before Shakespeare’s dialog begins. (The King of France never appears in Shakespeare’s play, yet the announcement of his death near the end serves as a critical turning point and a reminder of Navarre’s desire to defeat death by achieving fame in this life.)

Doug Scholz-Carlson as the King of Navarre tries to summon a seriousness that will meet death’s presence head on. Yet there is nothing about Scholz-Carlson and his followers that suggest seriousness—despite their serious oaths. They are dressed for sport in bright colors (in what seems to me to be a sort of 1900s country club look) even as they vow to three year’s study, fasting, and celibacy. Before the ink is dry on their vows, the men are bored and ready for diversions.

The diversion comes in two forms. The first diversion is the blundering verbosity of Christopher Gerson as the visiting Spaniard, Don Adriano de Armado. Gerson’s Spanish persona—complete with musketeer costume, sword and wig—does not disappoint. The other diversion comes by way of the Princess of France, Tara Flanagan, and her three attendants. Quickly, the King and his three men abandon their oaths and begin composing love sonnets in secret.

Chris Mixon as Berowne, one of the King’s men, does a wonderful job as perhaps the most verbal character in the play. His early speech explaining why it is unnatural to join the King’s school of fasting and celibacy temporarily alienates him from the King, but allys him to audience. He quickly appeases the King and agrees to sign with another poetical flourish punctuated with another rhyming couplet: “Give me paper, let me read the same, / And to the strictest decrees I’ll write my name” (I.i. 116-117).

While Mixon and the other men are serious about their sonneteering, Rosaline (Shanara Gabrielle) recognizes that these earnest men are not serious. Reprimanding Berowne, she tells him, “A jest’s prosperity lies in the ear / Of him that hears it, never in the tongue / Of him that makes it” (V.ii. 861-863) For once in the play, Berowne is humbled and speechless. Berowne and the rest have clearly been jesting for their own amusement and making love oaths for the love of the sound of them.

And the same could be said for Shakespeare, since the incessant word play is his. This production of Love’s Labour’s Lost consorts with its audience to enjoy the irony inherent in Shakespeare’s overly verbose warning of the dangers of poetry and speechifying.

Love’s Labour’s Lost plays in repertory with The Tempest through July 26.

Visit the Great River Shakespeare Festival for schedules and tickets: grsf.org