Love's Labour's Lost

Synopsis

The King of Navarre persuades three friends to join him in a vow of celibacy so that they can concentrate on their studies, but the beautiful princess of France and her three gorgeous ladies in waiting arrive for an informal visit.

Our Review:

24 February 2003

With its unexpected love-doesn't-necessarily-conquer-all ending, Love's Labour's Lost - in which a King's plans for male bonding and abstinence in studious isolation are sweetly disrupted by the arrival of a French princess and her bevy of beauties - is one of Shakespeare's more morose comedies and for this, his farewell National Theatre production, Trevor Nunn has wrested every darker nuance from the text.

Widely trailed as an Edwardian production, you might enter the NT Olivier auditorium expecting something akin to a Merchant Ivory film of languid, lotus-eating youths in country houses. Yet Nunn's Labour begins more like All Quiet on the Western Front as officer Berowne contemplates gentler times. In fact, in an unusual twist with this scene that comes full circle, Nunn uses the play's closing line - that "the words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo" - to both begin and end proceedings.

Do we really need ...

Read more of the review

Latest User Review

USER: Whatsonstage.com (195.93.50.13) - 12 March 2003:

Blimey! To quote Jonathan Ross, "Sweet baby Moses in a basket!" To quote Armado, "Heavy, dull and slow." To quote Holofernes, "This is not generous, not gentle, not humble." (Holofernes was talking about the audience - I am talking about this production, which bears little relation to Shakespeare's sparkling comedy.)...

Read more and add your own review