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MyspaceIn Elizabethan England, productions of Shakespeare’s plays were truly popular events, attracting huge audiences and appealing to members of all social classes. Typically staged by day in open-air amphitheaters, these plays were at least as much raucous entertainment as they were scholarly occasions.
Today, by contrast, Shakespearean theater is situated firmly in the high-art camp, and productions generally attract a highly educated audience. It’s probably impossible to return live theater to the place of cultural primacy it occupied in Shakespeare’s lifetime, but it’s certainly possible to present Shakespeare in the manner in which it would have been presented to a 16th-century audience.
That’s exactly the aim of Dominic Dromgoole, artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London. The company’s production of Love’s Labour’s Lost hints at the mass appeal the play might originally have had; the rowdy stage antics, house lights, and low-tech staging aim to mimic an Elizabethan-era production. What’s obviously missing is the audience’s response: Modern theatergoers are trained to sit quietly with their hands in their laps and hush the errant few who dare unwrap hard candies or whisper commentary to a companion.
No matter how it’s staged, Love’s Labour’s Lost is a delight for lovers of language. It’s even more full than the usual Shakespeare play of double entendres, miscommunications, linguistic loopholes, and multiple meanings. Throw in a flamboyant Spanish soldier, four noble scholars poorly disguised as Russians, and a fast-talking clown with an overactive libido, and you’ve got a play that is both wildly entertaining and intellectually demanding.
Between the inherent complexities of the script and the minimal amplification used in this production, there were moments when it was easy to sympathize with Costard’s comic admission: “I do confess much of the hearing it, but little of the marking of it.” Yet despite its challenges, the Globe’s Love’s Labour’s Lost captured the zany excitement of an Elizabethan-era Shakespearean comedy, if not with chicken bones being tossed from the pit or audience members breaking into fisticuffs, then at least with a slew of unsubtle sexual innuendoes. As the Princess of France, Michelle Terry was full of sparkling repartee and ruthless wit, while Fergal McElherron’s Costard was unforgettably, gleefully lewd.
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Hmmmm -
I attended the performance last Friday. I sat in the last row of the orchestra. I had a lot of problems with the the performance.
It was very hard to hear the actors. Add to this the intricate dialog and plot, and the result was that the whole thing was impossible for me to follow.
Even had I been able to hear everything well, I still would need to have recently read the play to really follow it. Which raises another interesting question to me. What language was it produced in. It didn't seem to be the original Iambic pentameter that I thought all the bard's plays were written. But then it clearly wasn't modern English either. It might have been interesting for the reviewer to explain this.
Then there is the plot. To our contemporary taste, it just seems silly. Perhaps it was Shakespeare's sop to the lowest common denominator of public taste of the time. Who knows, if 500 years, South Park might be considered great theater.
The reviewer seems to suggest that that audience response was too restrained (or too polite?). I'm suspecting that it was only due to that politeness which resulted in a general rumbling chuckle when queued by the actors.
"intellectually demanding" - no doubt. "wildly entertaining" - I doubt it.
Robert Ramey
ramey (anonymous profile)
November 17, 2009 at 12:55 p.m. (Suggest removal)