STAGE REVIEW : Jests of Young Men in ‘Labour’s Lost’

“Timon of Athens,” the Old Globe Theatre’s first Shakespeare of the season, is an old man’s curse. “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” which opened Sunday night, is a young man’s jest.

Timon is a misanthrope. The four bachelors in “Love’s Labour’s” (John Castellanos, George Deloy, Ray Chambers, John Walcutt) play at being woman-thropes, but the novelty wears off after a day or so.

Then it’s a question of winning back their insulted ladies (Kandis Chappell, Lynnda Ferguson, Darla Cash, Harriet Hall) who, from their smiles, weren’t particularly crushed.

Nothing serious, it seems, can befall these attractive young people. But Shakespeare has a surprise for them, and “Love’s Labour’s” closes on a note of unfulfillment. The young men will get a chance to play monk after all.

It still seems a daring way to end a romantic comedy. Under all its nonsense--the badinage, the fake Latin, the business of the boys putting on false beards and pretending to be Russians--”Love’s Labour’s” is a surprisingly thoughtful play.

In that regard, Craig Noel’s production profits from the presence of Ken Ruta as the fantastical Don Armado, a man for whom things obviously have gone wrong. If he’s a fool now, he may not always have been one.

Otherwise, Noel’s staging--presented under the stars at the Globe’s Lowell Davies Festival Theatre--doesn’t search the text for overtones that might make the comedy richer. Noel takes the surface of the play as the truth of it, and makes it gleam.

Noel sets the play somewhere around World War I, when young men took the piping on their jackets seriously and young women dressed--even in the country--so as to make a “picture.”

Richard Seger’s set presents the country (complete with cozy ruins) and Robert Wojewodski’s costumes give us the pictures. Even when the ladies dress up as harem girls for a joke--how better to receive those hairy Muscovites?--they do so in pure silk.

Dress and manners are a serious business here, which doesn’t imply prissy behavior. Part of being a lady or a gentleman is the naturalness of one’s manners.

That can include being a little blank personally. Of the lovers, only Kandis Chappell as the princess of France seems to have had any real experience in living--far more so than John Castellanos as the King of Navarre. He’s handsome and good natured, and that’s it. Why he wants to retire to the country to start an academy is not explained.

The other lovers too are just out of the box, shiny and a bit anonymous. In some productions Berowne and Rosaline stand out from their friends as the two who have real wit, as opposed to the general good humor of youth--the two who will still be interesting to know when they are 40.

Not here. George Deloy and Lynnda Fergusson are no more and no less amiable than Ray Chambers and Darla Cash as Longaville and Maria, and John Walcutt and Harriet Hall as Dumaine and Katherine. We see who these people are in the plural--the cream of the crop--but not in the singular.

The comics have faces. Tom Lacy is particularly amusing as the pedantic Holofernes, not so much the local schoolmaster as the self-satisfied head of the local classics department. Patrick T. O’Brien makes Sir Nathaniel into Brother Nathaniel, a wispy Franciscan with a taste for little theater.

And when Ruta ends the play with the strange, solemn “The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo,” you feel that a lesson has been learned--by the audience at least. This “Love’s Labour’s Lost” could go deeper, but it has breeding.

Plays at 8:30 p.m. Tuesdays-Sundays. Closes July 24. Tickets $17-$24. Lowell Davies Festival Theatre, Old Globe Theatre, Balboa Park, San Diego. (619) 239-2255. ‘LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST’

Shakespeare’s comedy, at the Old Globe Theatre, San Diego. With John Castellanos, George Deloy, Ray Chambers, John Walcutt, Kandis Chappell, Lynnda Ferguson, Darla Cash, Harriet Hall, Tim Donoghue, Ken Ruta, Thomas S. Oleniacz, Patrick T. O’Brien, Mitchell Edmonds, Tom Lacy, Scott Fults, Yolanda Lloyd, Richard Soto, Matt Edwards, Sterling Macer, Barry Mann, Laura Rearwin, Randy Reinholz, Jan Rogge. Director Craig Noel. Scenic designer Richard Seger. Costumes Robert Wojewodski. Lighting Robert Peterson. Sound James LeBrecht. Composer Conrad Susa. Choreographer Bonnie Johnston, Dramaturge Diana Maddox. Stage Manager Maria Carrera. Assistant stage manager Robert Drake. Casting consultants Gary Shaffer, C.S.A. and Mark Saks.