Love's Labour's Lost

Despite hilarious laugh out loud scenes and wonderful performances, this adaption fails at fidelity. Scenes are not only swapped, but cut and pasted, and there is a lot of dialogue removed. Being that this is a play about wordplay, puns, innuendos, etc. cutting lines is a large no. On another note, Moth appears older than Don Armando, which distracts when he is referred to as an adolescent (John Wilder agrees). If you have not read the play, then do not watch this expecting a perfect page to screen translation.

Neither the most fascinating or the most accessible of Shakespeare's plays, 'Love's Labour's Lost' is the first part of a new lost pair of plays centering on the King of Navarre and his Lords as they vow to foresake all female company for three years to concentrate on their studies. All, that is, but the Princess of France who just happens to be due on a state visit ... well attended by her ladies! As the King, Jonathan Kent (now a respected theatre director) is pleasing enough, and his young courtiers (Berowne is a peach of a part seized on with relish by Mike Gwilym; Longaville and Dumain are a couple of dreamers played by Christopher Blake and Geoffrey Burridge, two fine actors sadly now lost to us) are strong enough characterisations to move proceedings along.

Maureen Lipman is a mischievous Princess, all smiles and jests, while her ladies (Petra Markham, Jenny Agutter, and Katy Behean) make good foils for the lovestruck swains. The supporting cast are no less watchable - David Warner excellent as Armado, with John Kane as faithful servant, Paul Jesson fun as the dumb Costard, and Frank Williams (the vicar from 'Dad's Army') is well-cast as Dull.

Set in a limbo time and place and dressed accordingly, this production of 'Love's Labour's Lost' does much to bring in the viewer, and when the lines are most impenetrable, it doesn't matter.

A short adaptation at just two hours, this is a quiet production from the BBC set which sits nicely alongside showier pieces such as 'Hamlet' and 'Othello'.

As has already been noted, 'Love's Labour's Lost' is not one of "The Bard" William Shakespeare's best or most accessible plays despite being one of Shakespeare's shortest. Mostly for all that wordplay and dialogue, difficult to remember and not always easy to follow. It is a lot of fun to watch though and one of the most striking aspects of it is the very meaty character of Berowne, so it does deserve to be better known.

'Love's Labour's Lost' is not quite in the top 10 of the BBC Television Shakespeare series to me ('Much Ado About Nothing', 'Henry the Eighth', 'King Richard the Second', both parts of 'Henry the Fourth', 'The Taming of the Shrew', 'Richard III', 'Pericles', 'Twelfth Night', with 'Hamlet', 'King Lear', 'Measure for Measure' and 'All's Well that Ends Well' just missing out). It's not one of the weakest either, though don't dislike any of the productions ('A Midsummer Night's Dream', 'Romeo and Juliet', 'Othello', 'Antony and Cleopatra', 'The Tempest', though none are unwatchable). Personally put it somewhere near the top, have realised watching this very interesting if uneven series that some productions of the lesser known plays are better than those for the more famous plays.

There is really not an awful lot wrong here in 'Love's Labour's Lost'. Do agree that the abridgements and moving around of some of the text was not always necessary and actually complicated the story.

While all the cast give good to excellent performances, the production is a case of the supporting actors faring better than a few of the leads. Jonathan Kent and Maureen Lipman plays their parts spot on and there are no problems with the characterisation, but it is agreed that it is the age-appropriateness (or lack of it) that brings them down a little. Just didn't buy them as young lovers, but their characterisation does make up for that.

Mike Gwilym, as the play's most interesting character Berowne, and David Warner, having an absolute blast with Armado, are never less than splendid and were the clear standouts for me. This is not the first time Gwilym featured in the BBC Television Shakespeare series, do think that this is one of his best performances of the series, perhaps his best.

On a visual level too, 'Love's Labour's Lost' is one of the best looking and most professional of the series, like most of the Elijah Moshinsky-directed productions. Some of the series' productions, namely 'The Tempest' and 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', suffered from budget constraints, meaning a drab and unattractive look. Not here, thought the production values looked pretty gorgeous actually. It's beautifully and intelligently staged too, it is not always successful in making the story easy to follow but one is always engaged, it is a lot of fun and it is played straight without ever being too serious.

In summation, very good. 8/10

This is a chamber play, with a lot of elaborate verbal humor and a little action but not much.

There are reasons this particular Shakespeare play is not put on much in the theater, but make it more suitable for television than usual. We are close in, the faces of engaging personalities fill the screen, the comedy of broken vows, misdirected courtships and thwarted desire works well in TV scale.

That we forgive these characters for occasionally going into fits of laughter over puns and paradoxes that we will not ever understand is made possible by the director, Elijah Moshinsky. He has played fast and loose with the BBC/Time-Life ground rules of "either Shakespeare's time or the story's" by setting the action in an 18th Century Never-Neverland decorated delightfully by Watteau. with a touch of the Sir John Soane Museum for flavor. The result is well-paced, inventively staged and balm to the soul.

Acting honors go to David Warner as Don Armado. His character is endearingly off-center, without ever attempting a Spanish accent to match his name. There's certainly nothing here in this sweet loony at all like the sinister drip that Warner usually played in films - altogether a wonderful surprise.

Berowne is the best-written part, and Mike Gwilym's adenoids make happy sport with the Mercutio/Benedick-style dialog. Maureen Lipman appears more surprised than we are to find her as the Princess of France, but she acquits herself well. Jenny Agutter is delectable as Rosaline, even though her hair and makeup seem at least as appropriate for a small role in "The King and I."

Amidst the warm comedy, there is a pang with the sudden shift of tone near the end of the play at Marcade's announcement of a death. The extra resonance is caused by the appearance of the ever-sepulchral Valentine Dyall, age 77, in his farewell to the screen. He represents a link to the past, as his Duke of Burgundy in the Olivier "Henry V" forty years earlier is, and will continue to be, quite memorable.

"Love's Labour's Lost" is stronger in its influence than its performance history. Mozart's "Cosi fan tutte" picks up the device of lovers in Slavic disguise wooing the wrong women. G&S's "Princess Ida" may play around with the genders, but love trumps monastic scholarship in the same way.

In fact, all we usually know about this play is a lot of people aren't sure how to punctuate the title. Now it's possible to make friends with some splendid Shakespeare you are not likely to see on stage. Highly recommended.

This is one of the weaker adaptations from the BBC's "Complete Works" series. It's not my favorite script from him to begin with, but what William Shakespeare's original play lacked in a compelling, complex, or even realistic story, made up for in some of the cleverest and wittiest dialogue The Bard has ever put to a page in his career. However, the BBC's version of the text played it more straight, less funny or witty, not by cuts but by choice of delivery, which in turn made for a much less entertaining TV movie. I may have chuckled once, and for the rest of the time I was completely bored by what I was watching.