Stratford's current production of Shakespeare's mid-life comedy Love's Labour's Lost is as near to achieving perfect balance as any production of this notoriously thorny play is likely to get. Which is not to say that it's a perfect show overall. But the quality of balance is one that has somewhat eluded other productions of this play which I've seen.
Anyone who knows me well could predict that Love's Labour's Lost would be one of my favourite Shakespeare plays. That's because I have a well-known love for verbal and linguistic humour, and this play is crammed full of it to overflowing. Shakespeare's maturity as a writer and master of language came to full flower in this piece, and the results are by turns amazing, stimulating, intriguing, and maddening.
The situation upon which the plot turns is so ridiculous that laughter can follow just from reading a synopsis of it -- as I heard in some of the seats around me even before the show started.
There's a kind of furious energy in the outpouring of language here, and any staging of the play has to be kept on a tight rein to keep all these cascading strings of words from drowning audience and performers alike. Shakespeare introduced more new words (previously unused by him) in this play than in any other except Hamlet -- which is over 50% longer than this. The script is also full of contorted linguistic puzzles -- what else can you say about a play in which an entire scene turns on the confusion between a haud credo and a pricket? So there's a temptation to try to supplement or supplant the obscure verbal humour with more obvious physical and slapstick antics to keep the audience from falling asleep. This tendency, too, has to be held firmly in check.
The special strength of this production, directed by famed British director John Caird (in his Stratford debut), is that it does balance all the extremes and avoid virtually all of the traps, while keeping the play flowing smoothly forwards to its destined end.
Patrick Clark has designed a set of apparently solid stonework balustrades on stairs and seats around the perimeter of the Festival Theatre's thrust stage. It allows for great flexibility of acting areas as well as for the hiding places so essential to good comedy. A tree grows on the central balcony, and a few stray branches poke through in other places. Plainly the play is set in the park of Navarre's castle.
The traditional Lou Applebaum fanfares are replaced for this production by more stolid, simpler versions which are part of the production music. Played first in the lobby at the 5-minutes-to-curtain mark, they are repeated from the aisles of the auditorium to welcome the King and his companions into the first scene. Thereafter, the fanfare musicians -- in costume -- often play from the stage balcony, side stairs, the ramps from the underworld, or any other suitable place.
In place of clear lead roles, this play substitutes two lead quartets. The group of men includes the King (Sanjay Talwar) and his attendant lords, Berowne (Mike Shara), Longaville (Andrew Robinson), and Dumaine (Thomas Olajide). The scene where they vow to study and avoid women is nicely staged to highlight the looks of doubt and displeasure on Berowne's face, with all parts of the audience in turn allowed to see his growing skepticism. Mike Shara is a master of this kind of understated by-play, and of comic timing (as he amply proved when it came his turn to speak). The scene where all four in turn are spied writing love letters to their ladies was one of the great comic delights in the evening.
The corresponding quartet of ladies features the Princess of France (Ruby Joy) and her attendant ladies Rosaline (Sarah Afful), Maria (Ijeoma Emesowum) and Katherine (Tiffany Claire Martin). Their first scene was calculated to allow each in turn to have her moments as well. Their first meeting with the King and his lords was staged with similar mastery of the space to let us see all the key interactions taking place.
And then there are the comic characters: Don Adriano de Armado (Juan Chioran), the "fantastical Spaniard" and his page, Moth (Gabriel Long), Boyet, the attendant lord and messenger of the Princess (John Kirkpatrick), Holofernes, the schoolmaster (Tom Rooney) and his sidekick Nathaniel, the curate (Brian Tree), Constable Dull (Brad Rudy), Jaquenetta, the dairymaid (Jennifer Mogbock), and Costard -- one of the sharpest of Shakespeare's many unforgettable fool or clown characters (played in this performance by Josh Johnston). It's in the various scenes involving these characters that the danger of overplaying the physical comedy at the expense of the verbal chiefly lies -- and I've certainly seen them badly overplayed in previous productions. But no such excess occurred here.
The beauty of this show lies in the contrasts of tone between the groups of characters. The two groups of lovers speak for the most part in a conversational manner, avoiding rhetorical extremes, and their meaning is very palpable as a result. The comics tend towards a more rhetorical delivery at times, but it's used at select moments and so has no chance to become tiresome. One and all have avoided my biggest bugbear in Shakespeare, the old belief that if you say the lines fast enough it doesn't really matter whether you understand them or not.
Among all these characters, who stands out the most? It's a fair question, as the play doesn't really create automatic stars as some of the comedies do. Traditionally the play has been held by many to be about the sparring between Berowne and Rosaline, but I find it really comes across as a three-point balance. That relationship certainly is one of the three anchor points, but the King's relationship with the Princess is equally important, and no less is the role of Costard as the skewer poking holes in the dignity of every character who crosses his path.
Mike Shara's lengthy scenes as Berowne were comic masterpieces, in every sense. As Rosaline, Sarah Afful didn't attempt to match him in sheer exuberance, but her verbal thrusts were more telling. I can only describe it by saying that she has totally mastered the art of pointing her words, both metaphorically and literally, and you can practically hear the air hissing out of him whenever she punctures his pretensions.
Sanjay Talwar's King of Navarre was a more stolid character, less extravagant than Berowne, but also deeply emotional when the play demanded. As the Princess, Ruby Joy dominated the stage. Vocally and physically, she was a regal force to be reckoned with -- yet certainly prepared to be playful, as well, when required. Theirs, too, was a partnership with some wonderful moments.
Among the comedians, I have to commend Juan Chioran simply for having the nerve to step onto the stage in the most fantastical hairpiece I have ever seen at Stratford -- you'd have to see it to believe it. His Spanish accent, comically cranked up, certainly didn't prevent understanding his words, and his scenes with Moth (Gabriel Long) were absolutely delightful.
Brad Rudy presented the most stolid, expressionless face I've seen in many a year as Constable Dull. He also made the most of the haud credo/pricket scene mentioned above by pronouncing the words thus: "Howd. Cray. Doe." (pauses at each period, as indicated).
Josh Johnston, subbing in the important role of Costard, gave a performance full of energy and life, yet never overdone, so that every word of Costard's clever speeches came across (with only one exception, as he moved around in front of the balcony in one scene).
John Kirkpatrick's Boyet retained remarkable clarity, too, especially in scenes where he had to deliver lines while moving rapidly from place to place on the stage.
This play's dark ending presents an unusual obstacle, being one of the most uncomedic endings imaginable. Right from the moment when the bell began tolling as Marcade, the messenger of death (Robert King), walks slowly down through the audience to the stage, the change of tone is both achingly clear and beautifully shaded. "The scene begins to cloud," as Berowne says, and so do the voices and faces of all the characters, as they sense -- sooner than words can tell -- that life has just taken one of its unpredictable swerves down into darkness.
That sombre tone is then beautifully sustained right to the final lines spoken simply by Don Armado, for once not extravagant in flourishing words about. Chioran's delivery of that line -- "The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo. You, that way; we, this way" -- set a nuanced period to a lovely, amusing, heartfelt and therefore real performance of one of Shakespeare's trickier plays.
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