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A CurtainUp Review
Love’s Labor’s Lost
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Let us once lose our oaths to find ourselves,/ Or else we lose ourselves to keep our oaths. — Berowne
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Reg E. Cathey as Don Armado
(Photo credit: Richard Termine) |
The plot is remarkably simple: We meet the young King of Navarre (Hoon Lee) who vows to live a retired life in an “academe” for 3 years with his best lords, Berowne (Nick Westrate), Longaville (Keith Eric Chappelle), and Dumaine (Jorge Chacon) to become wise and famous. During this time, they will eat and sleep very sparingly and, above all, avoid women.
No sooner have the King and lords sworn to this ascetic plan than an embassy of the Princess of France (Renee Elise Goldsberry) with her 3 ladies (Michelle Beck, Rebecca Brooksher, Samira Wiley) arrives on the scene. For diplomatic reasons the young men must meet with the women. The rest of the play reveals schemes of all sorts, introduces us to a circle of “fantastics,” and invites us to witness a complex debate on learning and experience, with love being the governing word..
Love’s Labor’s Lost is Shakespeare’s most formal play. Intensely preoccupied with language, it's bathed in the “sweet smoke of rhetoric” with its perfumed words flowing through the men’s sonnet readings, the Muscovite masque, and the Pageant of the Nine Worthies. Indeed, the work ripples with “taffeta phrases, silken terms precise, and three-piled hyperboles.” But Shakespeare is both laughing at, and indulging in pedantry here. Without endorsing the excesses of language, he is enthusiastically guilty of all the verbal fireworks that explode in each scene.
The current production is very successful at achieving complex effects through simple means. John Conklin’s minimalist set represents Navarre’s court with a square of green turf to which Cupid’s red arrow has been emblematically added. What dominates the performing space, however, is a giant archery target sketched on the stage’s back wall, inscribed with mythological terms on an ink-black field. This image magnificently captures the hunting motif in the play. Not only does it underscore the men’s collective hunting for fame, but their later hunting for lovers, deer, and even letters of the alphabet. What’s more, the target’s concentric circles suggest the dramatic movement of the play from the particular to the universal.
Oana Botez Ban is bang on target with her costumes. In the opening scene the King and lords are dressed in short pants, comically pointing up their school boy callowness. And when the women later enter in smart equestrian outfits, one instinctively knows who’s wearing the pants in this play. From the Muscovites’ Russian coats and hats to the pedantic robes and caps of Holofernes and Sir Nathaniel, Ban’s costumes serve their sartorial function with panache.
Coonrod has chosen to do the play in a mode that embraces both the past and the present which works as well as any pseudo-historical time. It harks back to classical times with its Ovidian language, breezes to Beethoven’s era by playing his Fifth Symphony during the Muscovites’ traditional dance, and nods to contemporary culture with Beyonce’s pop hit “Single Ladies.” Coonrod makes the play a pleasant college boys’ romp that chillingly reverses itself with the coup de theatre of the play’s final scene.
The men have the better parts in the play. Nick Westrate plays the blade Berowne with the right intellectual blending of narcissism and romantic uncertainty. As the King, Hoon Lee is funny to watch as he tries to be serious in a frivolous way. Reg E. Cathey brings much bravura to his Don Armado. And there is a very good showing from Renee Elise Goldberry as the Princess of France, Rebecca Brooksher as Rosaline, and Stephanie DiMaggio as the country wench Jacquenetta. Though the play is to some degree a cartoon about affected pedantry, I found Steven Skybell’s Holofernes too caricatured. Granted that he is the play's most ridiculous character, Skybell gilds the lily with his over-the-top physical comedy.
Given the Public Lab's affordable ticket prices, one can't go wrong taking in this “great feast of language” that is still is a refreshing tale about turning points in young men’s lives. Perhaps the renowned poet W. H. Auden best summed up this corrective comedy best: “Loves’ Labor’s Lost is not the greatest of Shakespeare’s plays, but it is one of the most perfect.”
Love’s Labor’s Lost
Written by William Shakespeare
Directed by Karin Coonrod
Cast: Michelle Beck (Katharine), Rebecca Brooksher (Rosaline), Reg E. Cathey (Don Armado), Jorge Chacon (Dumaine), Keith Eric Chappelle (Longaville), Stephanie DiMaggio ( Jacquenetta), Renee Elise Goldsberry (Princess of France), Francis Jue (Sir Nathaniel/Marcade), Mousa Kraish (Costard), Hoon Lee (Ferdinand King of Navarre), Steven Skybell (Holofernes), Robert Stanton (Boyet/Dull), Nick Westrate (Berowne), Samira Wiley (Maria/Moth).
Sets: John Conklin
Costumes: Oana Botez-Ban
Sound: Tony Geballe
Lighting: Brian H. Scott
Vocal Coach: Robert Perillo
Production Stage Manager: Lori Lundquist
Stage Manager: Maggie Swing
The Public’s Anspacher Theater at 425 Lafayette Street Tickets: $15 Phone 212/967-7555 or visit www.publictheater.org
Opening 10/31/11; closing 11/06/11.
Tuesday through Friday @ 7:30pm; and Saturdays and Sundays at 2pm and 7:30pm.
Running time: 2 hours with no intermission
Tickets: $15
Reviewed by Deirdre Donovan based on press performance of 10/29/11
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