Review: Love’s Labour’s Lost – Guildford Shakespeare Company

Published on: 17 Jul, 2018
Updated on: 17 Jul, 2018

Objects of desire: the Princess of France (Sarah Gobran, second left) and friends.

By Alice Fowler

The year is 1939 and four male friends, all writers, seek a rural retreat away from London. There they vow to live and study, forgoing all pleasure – including talking to, and seeing, women.

So begins the Guildford Shakespeare Company’s new production, Love’s Labour’s Lost. This being Shakespeare – and the GSC – it is not long before several women arrive: Costard, owner of the village tea-shop, and the Princess of France with three attractive friends.

Hilarity of all kinds unfolds as the men promptly fall in love, are outsmarted by the women and, naturally, fail miserably to keep their vow.

The company drinks to whatever the future holds

This is one of Shakespeare’s early comedies, thought to have been written in the mid-1590s and performed before Elizabeth I in 1597. Director and adaptor Tom Littler’s version is set amid the Bloomsbury group, whose jokes, mishaps and flirtations play out, poignantly, on the eve of war.

The cast of ten, fresh from their exuberant production of Robin Hood, extract every possible ounce of humour. Elaine Claxton shines as café owner Costard, a down to earth voice amid the highfalutin scholars.

GSC co-founder Matt Pinches gives a side-splitting performance as Don Adriano de Armado, a Spanish refugee who falls for waitress Jaquenetta (Paula James). Shakespeare’s satire of academe and pomposity – and the need for honesty in how we express our feelings – retains a healthy relevance today.

Berowne (Gavin Fowler) and friends, watched by Costard (Elaine Claxton) and, just visible, a cake

Designer Neil Irish creates a visual treat, with Costard’s Café centre stage. Costumes are excellent throughout, with wonderful tweeds for a scene in which the Princess and her friends go shooting, and all-in-one bathing costumes for the men who frolic beside the river.

Somehow, from the old stone walls and grassy banks of the University of Law – and the help of a small rowing boat – the GSC conjures up a convincing riverside scene. Loud splashes are heard as members of the cast jump into the ‘water’ and swim amid the audience.

Are we amused? The women are entertained by the men, disguised as a troop of Muscovites.

Many of Shakespeare’s favourite tropes occur, including love letters that are wrongly delivered and a play within a play. One unexpected star is a Victoria sandwich cake – used as a hiding place for love letters and consumed in huge slabs by the cast. Twenty-three such cakes, all homemade by GSC supporters, will appear through the show’s two-week run.

As the title suggests, for all the men’s efforts to woo their lovers, fate has something else in mind. We are in 1939, after all, and the play ends on a note of uncertainty and change. This is a robust, elegant and heart-breaking comedy – not to be missed.

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