5 December 2009: Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost
5 December 2009: Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost
Matinee. Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, on tour. Massachusetts International Festival of the Arts. War Memorial Auditorium, Holyoke. Directed by Dominic Dromgoole. 2 hrs. 45 mins.
The Globe Theater company goes on tour when the London Globe Theatre is closed. Their season opens in London on April 23 and continues into October. For much of the rest of the time they are out of London. This year for the first time they are in Holyoke, Massachusetts, as part of the M.I.F.A. From the opening minutes of this production it was clear that this company is not a second string touring company but a company composed of first rate, highly competent if still young (most of them) actors. This point was brought home to us early on when the four regal ladies from France, headed by the Princess of France, made their entrance. For the princess of France was played by none other than Michelle Terry, whom we had seen earlier this year in a HD broadcast of a wonderful National Theatre production of All’s Well That Ends Well, in which she played Helena. In this role she had the same remarkable, intense stage presence that she exhibited in the previous play, along with the same fine sense of timing and clear, perfectly pitched voice. Michelle Terry is a fine comic actress who has gone far already and will predictably go much farther.
The rest of the company were her equal, or almost, with the result that this production of Shakespeare’s witty, sparkling comedy with its surprise somber ending was a complete delight. The Globe appears to specialize in doing Shakespeare in original Elizabethan-Jacobean costume, and they brought their open stage with them. The stage was placed on the floor of the War Memorial Auditorium, something under a foot off the floor itself; folding-chair seating was arranged on three sides of the stage on risers. Everyone had a clear view. Upstage, a central, wide, two-door entrance opened in the upstage direction on cue; two other, smaller entrances were masked as need be by curtains. Above this, there was a musicians’ gallery with entrances, unseen, behind but with access provided also by a ladder against the superstructure. This, plus an occasional prop that could function as a bench or something else as necessary, along with a lectern for the opening scene (in which the King of Navarre lays down the laws of his new “academe”), were all the stage furniture they needed. Moreover, there were every bit as many musicians, it seemed, as there were actors, and playing musical instruments original to Shakespeare’s period.
This is one of the more difficult Shakespearean comedies to perform. The actors must have a truly firm command of language and an excellent technique for making it appear simultaneously natural, coherent, and articulate for the audience. Pace and timing are crucial; just as important is having fun with the play. It is a delicious comedy, about what most Shakespearean comedies are about: