Love's Labour's Lost

Love's Labour's Lost (1985) (TV) (The BBC version) is one of Shakespeare's early comedies, given a respectful interpretation by the BBC. The film was directed by Elijah Moshinsky.

Here's what I copied and pasted from my review of the movie from The Globe Theatre production of LLL:

Love's Labour's Lost (Globe Theatre Version) (2010) (V) isn't one of Shakespeare's great comedies.

There are four intertwined subplots. One involves the King of Navarre and three of his young courtiers/companions, and the Princess of France and three of her ladies-in-waiting/companions. Another involves a stereotypical Spanish nobleman and his love for a country lass. A third involves the same country lass, who may or may not be in love with a country lad (The lad, Costard, wanders in and out of all the plots.) The fourth plot involves three bourgeois officials--the preacher, the teacher, and the constable. There's also a major role for Moth, the witty servant to Don Armado, the Spaniard. To add to this there are men disguised as "Muscovites," mistaken identities, and a pageant performed by the three bourgeois men.

Surprisingly, Love's Labour's Lost is loaded with wordplay. There are endless puns, endless poems, and endless commentary about puns, poems, and words. Shakespeare was warming up. Knowing what we know now, we can sense the genius flexing his mental and verbal muscles—getting ready to give us Much Ado About Nothing and Midsummer Night's Dream.

Anyone putting on this play has to deal with a weak premise and an intricate—and not very funny—plot. The BBC series played it straight. "This is Shakespeare's play, and we're going to perform it as he wrote it. If it's not a great play, that's not our fault."

As is usual in the BBC productions, the acting was highly professional. The costumes were wonderful, and the sets were excellent. (The BBC sometimes doesn't do much with sets, but this time they did.)

The two leads--Jonathan Kent as Ferdinand, King of Navarre and Maureen Lipman as The Princess of France--are excellent actors. However, they were both in their late 30's when the movie was produced. The play is really about young love, and so in that sense they were miscast. However, suspension of disbelief goes a long way, and after a while you just admired them as they demonstrated their acting skills.

The Globe Theatre production of LLL was more of a slapstick version, which worked on its own terms. However, if you want to see LLL as you would see it on the stage--as we did, in Stratford, Ontario--this is the version for you.

The BBC's Shakespeare productions were made for TV, so, naturally, they work well on the small screen.

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.

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.