Review: Love's Labours Lost
Oct. 17th, 2019 08:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
daisyninjagirlA friend recently pointed out to me that our local library website subscribes to a service called Bloomsbury Drama Online, which along with the text of a lot of well-known plays, also has some filmed and audio versions as well. (This includes radio plays, like a remake of Orson Welles' War of the Worlds starring Leonard Nimoy and diverse other Star Trek actors - but I digress.)
The recent gem I've been watching is the RSC version of Love's Labours Lost, one of the lesser known of Shakespeare's plays. The basic plot is Boys vs Girls, with mostly the girls winning, and by golly did they have fun with it. It's staged in 1914 with all the pretty frocks and 'great house' architecture and the production team deciding to hell with it, this is a comedy, let's go for broke. (There was a lot of bonus humour in the form of bowling games and strategic use of teddy bears. And the odd hair net.) They also spent a lot of time thinking through how they could put in even more song and dance numbers. Early on this is relatively modest, with a servant singing a modest aria, or some sentimental music playing as a lord recites a sonnet he has just composed; by the end of the play they've pulled out all the stops with fake Russians doing a cossack dance and the local villagers staging a panto that turns into a brawl, with a rousing anthem to finish up.
It's utterly sparkling, and an excellent way to spend two and a half hours.
The recent gem I've been watching is the RSC version of Love's Labours Lost, one of the lesser known of Shakespeare's plays. The basic plot is Boys vs Girls, with mostly the girls winning, and by golly did they have fun with it. It's staged in 1914 with all the pretty frocks and 'great house' architecture and the production team deciding to hell with it, this is a comedy, let's go for broke. (There was a lot of bonus humour in the form of bowling games and strategic use of teddy bears. And the odd hair net.) They also spent a lot of time thinking through how they could put in even more song and dance numbers. Early on this is relatively modest, with a servant singing a modest aria, or some sentimental music playing as a lord recites a sonnet he has just composed; by the end of the play they've pulled out all the stops with fake Russians doing a cossack dance and the local villagers staging a panto that turns into a brawl, with a rousing anthem to finish up.
It's utterly sparkling, and an excellent way to spend two and a half hours.
