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Shakespeare & Beyond

From jazzercise to Rococo garden: Four different takes on Love's Labor's Lost

The cast of William Shakespeare's Love's Labor's Lost, directed by Kathleen Marshall, running August 14 - September 18, 2016 at The Old Globe. Photo by Jim Cox.
The cast of William Shakespeare's Love's Labor's Lost, directed by Kathleen Marshall, running August 14 - September 18, 2016 at The Old Globe. Photo by Jim Cox.

In Shakespeare’s Love’s Labor’s Lost, four friends forswear women so that they can focus on their studies. But, of course, as soon as they do, four lovely ladies enter their lives. Oh, what to do? Romance and comedy ensue.

Four of our theater partners—The Old Globe, Seattle Shakespeare Company, Idaho Shakespeare Festival, and Commonwealth Shakespeare Company—staged the play this past summer, and we asked them to share about their particular production and what made it unique.

But first, here’s a quick plot review:

In Love’s Labor’s Lost, the comedy centers on four young men who fall in love against their wills. The men, one of them the king of Navarre, pledge to study for three years, avoiding all contact with women. When the Princess of France arrives on a state visit, the king insists she and her ladies camp outside the court. Even so, each young man falls in love with one of the ladies.

And then there’s the side story:

Meanwhile, Don Armado, a Spanish soldier, falls for a servant girl, Jacquenetta. Costard, an illiterate local, mixes up two letters he is to deliver, one from Armado to Jacquenetta and the other from Berowne, one of the king’s companions, to Rosaline, one of the French ladies.

And (spoiler alert!) how it all ends:

The men confess they are in love, and devise a pageant for the ladies, who set a trap for them by exchanging identifying markers. When word comes that the princess’s father is dead, the ladies reject the men’s proposals as rash and impose a year’s delay before any further wooing.

Seattle Shakespeare Company

Seattle Shakespeare’s version from this past summer was set in the late 1970s. Here’s what Artistic Director George Mount says about the production:

“Our Love’s Labour’s Lost was time shifted to the Me Generation 1970s, allowing the intellectual self-reflection efforts of the King and his cohorts to be seen through a lens of transcendental meditation, jazzercise, and self-help navel gazing. It also provided for plenty of period pop culture references, music and cringe-worthy fashion choices. For a free park show, this allowed us to be true to the inherent folly of the men’s resolution as expressed in the plot of the play, but also bring a large dose of accessibility and goofy laughter to an otherwise perplexing and heady play.”