The Actors' Shakespeare Project Love's Labour's Lost

[xiphias]

The Actors' Shakespeare Project is finishing off their third season with
an extra, bonus play, a six-person Love's Labour's Lost, a
light, fluffy, and funny play to balance out a season which would
otherwise be entirely about psychotic princes killing their families.

If you include the 2000 Kenneth Branagh movie version, Lis and I have now
seen LLL four times. In those four times, we've seen it done
more-or-less straight once.

This wasn't that time.

(For the record, it was the 2006 Huntington Theater production, reviewed
by Lis
and by me. The
other one was the 2005 ART student-troupe production, which I also reviewed.)

As pure entertainment, it works very well. If you want to laugh and enjoy
yourself for two and a half hours, this is an extremely good way to go
about it. The belly-laughs started within thirty seconds of the actors'
first appearance on the stage. They use physical comedy, including
slapstick, and very clearly let you know what you're in for -- and they
deliver handsomely on that promise of entertainment and humor.

So it works as entertainment. Which makes it worth watching. But how
does it work as a production of Love's Labour's Lost?

Let's start with some basic things. First, it's a six-person cast. Now,
there are nineteen characters in the play -- but you can safely ditch
three of them.

Here are all of "First Lord"'s lines:

"Lord Longaville is one."

"Here comes Boyet."

Here are all of "Forester"'s lines:
"Hereby, upon the edge of yonder coppice;
A stand where you may make the fairest shoot. "

"Pardon me, madam, for I meant not so."

"Yes, madam, fair."

"Nothing but fair is that which you inherit."

And here are all of "Mercade"'s lines:

"God save you, madam!"

"I am sorry, madam; for the news I bring
Is heavy in my tongue. The king your father—"

"Even so; my tale is told."

So there are actually sixteen real characters.

The young actor Khalil Flemming plays Moth, one of Shakespeare's better
roles for a child actor, since he actually gets to use other characters as
his straight-man and deliver the punchlines himself. And the other five
actors each play three roles apiece.

Now, given that there are several scenes in which nine or more characters
are on stage at one time (heck, I'm pretty sure that, at the last scene,
pretty much EVERYBODY is on stage at once) this is a bit of a challenge,
which is one of the things which makes the performance fun.

So, how do they manage this? Well, each actor wears several
hats. Literally. Each character is signified by a hat-and-wig
combination, which sits on a set of hat-trees which are at the back of the
stage (and which also work as the trees in which various characters hide.
. .) As actors play different roles, they get different hats.

As it turns out, it takes very little re-organization of the text to make
this flow smoothly.

Let's start with a brief overview of the play. The young King of Navarre
and his three buddies swear to study day and night for three years, and
for that whole time, not even see nor speak to any women. Just as they
finish up swearing to this, they remember that the Princess of France and
her three buddies (along with Boyet, their servant) are about to
show up and they need to deal with them.

Then, some other stuff is also happening in the "B" plot. Costard and Don
Armando both love Jacquenetta (which is convenient, because Jacquenetta
appears to be one of those women who loves anybody who's got a buck or
two), Holofernes and Nathaniel use lots of big words, Armando attempts to
use lots of big words, but isn't very good at it, and Moth makes fun of
him.

In the "A" plot, there are, obviously, four pairs of lovers. You have the
King and the Princess, you have Berowne and Rosaline, who are the lovers
who are clever and witty and get all the good lines (think Beatrice and
Benedick), and you have the Other Two Pairs, who are, um, extra.

So: Johnny Lee Davenport gets Boyet, the servant of the Princess in the
"A" plot, and Don Armando in the "B" plot. He also gets Constable Dull, a
sort of "utility infielder" character who gets to carry people off to jail
and be made fun of by the people who use big words. And Khalil Flemming
gets Moth.

The other four actors each get one male lover, one female lover, and one
person in the "B" plot. Marianna Bassham gets Dumaine (Spare Male Lover
#1), Costard (Rustic Horny Guy), and Rosaline (Clever, Witty Female
Lover). Jason Bowen gets Berowne (Clever, Witty Male Lover), Holofernes
(Pedantic Schoolteacher Who Uses Big Words), and Katharine (Spare Female
Lover #1)
Sarah Newhouse's roles are Longaville (Spare Male Lover #2), the Princess
of France, and Jacquenetta the bicycle, while Michael Forden Walker
portrays the King of Navarre, Maria (Spare Female Lover #2), and Nathaniel
(Pedantic Curate Who Uses Big Words).

All four of the important lovers (Rosaline, Berowne, the King, and the
Princess) are done well. All four of the unimportant lovers (Dumaine,
Katharine, Longaville, and Maria) aren't. Bassham does try to distinguish
her Unimportant Lover, Dumaine, by making him unusually stupid. I thought
it was a good idea to try to do something to distinguish Dumaine from
Longaville, but Lis thought that it was just more distracting than useful.
As far as I could tell, the other three actors don't even particularly
try to distinguish their Unimportant Lovers, focusing their energies
instead primarily on their Important Lovers, and secondarily on their "B"
plot characters -- and, frankly, I think that's the right choice. I may
someday watch a production of LLL which makes me care about
Dumaine, Longaville, Katherine, and Maria, but I haven't yet, and, for
now, I consider them important only in that they make up the numbers,
giving enough characters to make up funnier scenes with more confusion.
If anyone reading this wants to consider this a challenge, of course, I'd
be thrilled to see what you can come up with to make those four
interesting and distinct. But, for this production, I was happy to see
everyone get one good lover, and one of the spares.

How about the "B" plot?

I think Lis and I disagreed almost completely down the line about who we
liked best in the "B" plot. But neither of us disliked any character. I
thought Bassham's Costard was okay, Lis thought he was great. I loved
Newhouse's Jacquenetta; Lis felt she was acceptable. I didn't have any
problems with Walker's Nathaniel, but he didn't really "click" for me,
either; Lis really enjoyed him a lot. And, of course, for me, every
performance of Holofernes I ever see, I'm going to be mentally comparing
it to Robert Jason Jackson's performance in the 2006 Huntington Theater
production. Bowen's Holofernes was perfectly fine -- but it wasn't
Jackson's.


About the venue: imaginary_love_ mentioned that she
had problems with the venue as it was set for Titus. I'd
like to reassure her that the venue is entirely re-arranged for this
performance, and that I don't think she'd have the same obstructed-view
problems that she had then. The production has very simple set dressing,
and the stage is placed against a wall. While, for Titus,
they used the support pillars of the building as part of the stage (or, at
least, that's how I recall it), in this case, those pillars are simply
things that the risers for seating are built around. Titus
used a very creative and evocative set-dressing, but, as imaginary_love_ discovered, no matter how good that is, it rarely
comes without some sort of cost; this is much less experimental, a much
more typical setup, with seating on three sides of the stage. It's one of
the ways to set up a room that I consider typical, and consider a
generally solid choice for performing Shakespeare.

We didn't notice any of the problems with heat that she'd had, but, then,
this WAS an evening performance on a pretty nice night.

So, to summarize: first, it's a heck of a lot of fun. Second, doing it
with a six-person cast is not simply a gimmick, but it strengthens the
play by allowing everybody to concentrate on one or two of the stronger
roles in the play, while de-emphasizing the weaker ones. Third, after a
season of murder, psychosis, paranoia, and treachery, the ASP really
deserves to get to do a fun, light play. And finally, you
deserve to see it.

Prices and schedule are available at http://actorsshakespeareproject.org/

Comments

[noveldevice.livejournal.com]

I blush to mention that you have double-posted.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Oops. The second one was supposed to go in bard_in_boston.