Love’s Labour’s Lost

It’s the season of merriment at the Globe this year. Following an Othello that draws rather more comedy than usual and a Merchant of Venice that’s full of mirth, artistic director Dominic Dromgoole’s production of Love’s Labour’s Lost is frantic, knockabout comedy from beginning to end.

Good fun. However, I don’t think this latest offering is as successful as the other two: partly because Love’s Labour’s it not so good a play but mainly because the treatment is so heavy handed. Every double entendre is lavishly emphasised, acting as a metaphorical dig in the ribs to the audience – it’s as if Frankie Howerd had got hold of the script. It’s a marked contrast to the last major London outing of this play, Trevor Nunn’s National Theatre production, in which the spirit of death constantly hovered over the action. Dromgoole plays down the darker side entirely to embrace the bawdiness.

The play mocks the rituals of courtly love and takes sideswipes at pretension and pomposity. But Dromgoole keeps the fun rattling along – a bare bottom here, a cocaine gag there – albeit with little subtlety. In particular, the princess and her entourage are presented as very modern women, mocking their lovers’ courting rituals and making suggestive remarks about the sexual possibilities. You can hear their spiritual descendents in the wine bars of Clapham and Kensington any night of the week.

It doesn’t help that this is one of the filthiest plays that Shakespeare wrote: there’s some outrageous sexual punning in nearly every scene; meat and drink to the Globe groundlings. The nine worthies scene even ends in a chase food fight more reminiscent of the Keystone Kops or Benny Hill than of Shakespeare.

There are some well-judged performances though. Trystan Gravelle is an eloquent, Welsh Berowne, Michelle Terry is one of the sprightliest princesses I’ve seen. I liked Christopher Godwin’s dry-as-dust, yet somehow sympathetic Holofernes and Seroca Davis is an engaging Moth, spinning out some of the rudest lines with a sweet innocence. Timothy Walker’s Don Armado, however, is too often inaudible, a stark reminder of how unforgiving the Globe stage can be.

Jonathan Fensom’s intricate, knot garden set extends from the Globe stage, bringing the action closer to the groundlings. And, I must note, that those groundlings, and the rest of the audience on press night, lapped it all up; it’s certainly a jolly evening. But for me, there’s a bit too much “songs of Apollo” and not enough harsh “words of Mercury” to make this Love’s Labour’s Lost truly memorable.

– Maxwell Cooter