Last night (26th January 2024) I watched the Eastbourne Operatic & Dramatic Society's performance of LLL at the Royal Hippodrome Theatre, Eastbourne. Perhaps this should have been billed as Love’s Labour’s Lost: the Musical.
LLL is a difficult play to offer to modern audiences. Not only is it one of Shakespeare’s weakest but it is a comedy that relies heavily on puns that often don’t translate to modern speech, especially the proverbs, many of which are no longer current. So it was probably wise of the director to axe large portions of the script and replace them with pop songs. Perhaps it would have been even wiser to rewrite the whole thing.
Of course, going down the musical route necessitates having cast members who can actually sing and here EODS is blessed. Although some of the singers were no more than enthusiastic, Seth Ringrose, Samuel Kavlakli, Malachi Jones, Miah Jumbo, Heather Tingley and Jane Tingley were all good singers and Annie Bennett’s trained soprano was operatic. Some of the dance moves were also memorable, especially those of Seth Ringrose.
Several of the actors gave us comically over the top performances. Notable were Michael Shepherd as stereotypical Spaniard Don Adriano, Annie Bennett as pedantic school teacher Mistress Holofernes, and Christian McDonald as Boyet, channelling John Inman from 'Are You Being Served?' (there are hints in the text that Boyet is gay, In Act 2 Scene 1 Line 217 Boyet says of Berowne, with whom he has been exchanging quips "I was as willing to grapple as he was to board" which is an ostensibly naval metaphor but could be taken sexually - after all LLL is full of doubles entendres). Malachi Jones played opposite a teddy bear to great comic effect.
Seth Ringrose as Berowne and Eve Chatfield as Rosaline both gave us a real sense of the tension between these two characters; I’d love to see them as Benedick and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing. Samuel Kavakli and Melody Bertucci were excellent in the way that they reacted on stage to what others were saying. And the exchange between Simon Gisby and Maisie Chalk when he tells the Princess of her father’s death was a perfect moment of theatrical shock. That stopped the comedy, though it made the King of Navarre look callously inappropriate when he continued to press his suit.
LLL is a difficult play to offer to modern audiences. Not only is it one of Shakespeare’s weakest but it is a comedy that relies heavily on puns that often don’t translate to modern speech, especially the proverbs, many of which are no longer current. So it was probably wise of the director to axe large portions of the script and replace them with pop songs. Perhaps it would have been even wiser to rewrite the whole thing.
Of course, going down the musical route necessitates having cast members who can actually sing and here EODS is blessed. Although some of the singers were no more than enthusiastic, Seth Ringrose, Samuel Kavlakli, Malachi Jones, Miah Jumbo, Heather Tingley and Jane Tingley were all good singers and Annie Bennett’s trained soprano was operatic. Some of the dance moves were also memorable, especially those of Seth Ringrose.
Several of the actors gave us comically over the top performances. Notable were Michael Shepherd as stereotypical Spaniard Don Adriano, Annie Bennett as pedantic school teacher Mistress Holofernes, and Christian McDonald as Boyet, channelling John Inman from 'Are You Being Served?' (there are hints in the text that Boyet is gay, In Act 2 Scene 1 Line 217 Boyet says of Berowne, with whom he has been exchanging quips "I was as willing to grapple as he was to board" which is an ostensibly naval metaphor but could be taken sexually - after all LLL is full of doubles entendres). Malachi Jones played opposite a teddy bear to great comic effect.
Seth Ringrose as Berowne and Eve Chatfield as Rosaline both gave us a real sense of the tension between these two characters; I’d love to see them as Benedick and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing. Samuel Kavakli and Melody Bertucci were excellent in the way that they reacted on stage to what others were saying. And the exchange between Simon Gisby and Maisie Chalk when he tells the Princess of her father’s death was a perfect moment of theatrical shock. That stopped the comedy, though it made the King of Navarre look callously inappropriate when he continued to press his suit.
The costumes were fabulous. I was particularly impressed with the idea of matching the colours of the lords' blazers with those of the ladies' dresses.
Unfortunately, I found it difficult to hear some of the actors some of the time. It wasn’t that they were too quiet but that sometimes they rushed their lines. I was told by a director that even if your line is ‘pass the marmalade’, if the audience can’t hear it they will assume they have missed something important. This is even more important in a play like LLL when so much of the humour depends on what is said. I’m sure I missed a lot of the jokes. It was particularly disappointing with Don Armado, whose thick Spanish accent was funny but masked some of what he was saying, and Mistress Holofernes. The humour of their roles depends to a large extent on their ridiculous use of language and much of that was lost. I also missed many of the lines of the sonnets and what is the point of introducing new characters and new lines when they add so little to the script?
There comes a point in amateur dramatics when the line between pleasing the audience and pleasing themselves is crossed. The symptoms of the latter are when there are parts doled out to mates, when the stage business overpowers the dialogue (but I loved the teddy bears, especially the one that wouldn’t sit on the podium, a brilliant moment of breaking the fourth wall), and then there are ever so many costume changes (most actors adore dressing up). The EODS cast were clearly having a whale of a time being silly on stage. Mostly this worked.
What would Shakespeare have thought? I suspect he would have rolled his eyes a little (there is that famous scene in Hamlet where he exhorts the travelling players to stick to the script) and then realised how much the audience were enjoying the show and counted the takings and started dreaming about his next house purchase.
Because there’s no doubt that the audience loved it. I suspect a number of them were friends and relatives of the cast but even this old cynic appreciated the exuberance and the enthusiasm. They got me laughing and I even joined in with the chorus of the song at the end.
It was more panto than Shakespeare but what the hell: it was a good night out and it breathed new life into what is possibly Shakespeare's least impressive work.
Unfortunately, I found it difficult to hear some of the actors some of the time. It wasn’t that they were too quiet but that sometimes they rushed their lines. I was told by a director that even if your line is ‘pass the marmalade’, if the audience can’t hear it they will assume they have missed something important. This is even more important in a play like LLL when so much of the humour depends on what is said. I’m sure I missed a lot of the jokes. It was particularly disappointing with Don Armado, whose thick Spanish accent was funny but masked some of what he was saying, and Mistress Holofernes. The humour of their roles depends to a large extent on their ridiculous use of language and much of that was lost. I also missed many of the lines of the sonnets and what is the point of introducing new characters and new lines when they add so little to the script?
There comes a point in amateur dramatics when the line between pleasing the audience and pleasing themselves is crossed. The symptoms of the latter are when there are parts doled out to mates, when the stage business overpowers the dialogue (but I loved the teddy bears, especially the one that wouldn’t sit on the podium, a brilliant moment of breaking the fourth wall), and then there are ever so many costume changes (most actors adore dressing up). The EODS cast were clearly having a whale of a time being silly on stage. Mostly this worked.
What would Shakespeare have thought? I suspect he would have rolled his eyes a little (there is that famous scene in Hamlet where he exhorts the travelling players to stick to the script) and then realised how much the audience were enjoying the show and counted the takings and started dreaming about his next house purchase.
Because there’s no doubt that the audience loved it. I suspect a number of them were friends and relatives of the cast but even this old cynic appreciated the exuberance and the enthusiasm. They got me laughing and I even joined in with the chorus of the song at the end.
It was more panto than Shakespeare but what the hell: it was a good night out and it breathed new life into what is possibly Shakespeare's least impressive work.
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