STAGE REVIEW : Leaner ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’

Love’s labor is not lost but trimmed down to fighting weight in Shakespeare Festival/LA’s “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” which had its opening Friday at the John Anson Ford Theatre.

Director Kevin Kelley has placed this comedy’s wordy action in the 20th Century, no decade specified. He has said the time could be the ‘50s, but Caryn Neman’s costumes, especially the women’s gowns and little hats with veils, suggest the ‘30s. So does the play’s innocence, its intellectual dalliance and bucolic laissez faire underscored by the gentle compositions of Vince Trombetta and his jazz quartet.

“Love’s Labour’s Lost” is one of the earlier and more verbally dense of Shakespeare’s comedies. He hadn’t yet mastered the bluster of a Dogberry in “Much Ado About Nothing,” the breezy nerdiness of an Audrey in “As You Like It” or the tender antics of a Rosalind and Orlando, but you can see them coming.

In this play, the young King of Navarre (Jonathan Emerson) is attempting to establish a literary sanctuary at court with three of his closest friends: Dumain (Pascal Marcotte), Longaville (Mark Damon) and the wily Berowne (Paul Perri). The hitch is that they must forgo all female contact, which sets up an obvious premise: How are these four red-blooded males going to abstain from women, especially when the King has forgotten that the Princess of France is dropping in for a visit?

Conveniently, the willowy Princess (Cynthia Bond) has three ladies-in-waiting, all dressed to the nines and each attracted--surprise, surprise--to the guys at the court of Navarre. The guys are only too eager to return the favor. Throw in a rustic or two and a pair of vaudeville turns and you have it made.

The first vaudeville turn involves a country bumpkin named Costard (the hilarious Max Grodenchik) and a Daliesque Spaniard, Don Adriano de Armado (Time Winters), who lusts after a gum-chewing wench in tight-fitting tights named Jaquenetta (Wendle Josepher doing a spin-off on “West Side Story’s” Anybody’s).

The second subplot brings together the reedy Nathaniel (Patrick Thomas O’Brien), a curate with an indiscriminate passion for education and rhyme, and Holofernes (David Sage), the bombastic schoolteacher who can supply both in abundance and even in Latin.

Before play’s end, the vaudevillians have joined forces to put on a silly show-within-a-show. We have witnessed the courtly young men try to fool each other and fail, then seen them turn Cossack in an effort to fool their paramours--and fail again (succeeding only in looking like the Flying Karamazovs in the process). The women, who catch on quickly on the other hand, create their own little deceptions and, much more successfully, manage to fool the men and win the day.

It would be hard to find a more inconsequential plot anywhere--or more words with which to tell it. To his credit, Kelley has given us one of the shortest versions of “Love’s Labour’s” this side of the Reduced Shakespeare Company. It is brisk and attractive. Fred M. Duer’s Italianate garden setting has just enough disorder to blend in naturally with the surrounding hillside, and the Trombetta music helps, especially as one is lulled by the sweet tones of Robert Grossman’s Boyet, chaperon to the ladies of the French court, singing the tender final song.

The comedy may still bog down in language here and there, but “Love’s Labour’s” labor is eased by Rosalind Chao’s intelligent Rosaline (a good match for Berowne) and by Bond’s grace and equanimity as the French princess. Juliette Kurth and Therese Pickard make spirited traveling companions, and a special mention should be made of Patrick Fabian’s Moth, the irrepressibly coltish servant to Don Armado.

Under the stars, and with the pliant enthusiasm shown by this cast, one can be more forgiving of Shakespeare’s convoluted game-playing. While remaining loyal to its artists--notably Duer and Kelley--the festival is to be congratulated for consistently raising its standards and its challenges. With admission still only canned goods for the needy, everyone wins.

‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’

John Emerson: Ferdinand, King of Navarre

Paul Perri: Berowne

Mark Damon: Longaville

Pascal Marcotte: Dumain

Cynthia Bond: Princess of France

Rosalind Chao: Rosaline

Therese Pickard: Maria

Juliette Kurth: Katherine

Time Winters: Don Adriano de Armado

Robert Gross: Boyet

Max Grodenchik: Costard

David Sage: Holofernes

Patrick Thomas O’Brien: Sir Nathaniel

Wendle Josepher: Jaquenetta

Maury Hillstrom: Anthony Dull, Forester

Patrick Fabian: Moth

A presentation of Shakespeare Festival/LA. Producing director Benjamin Donenberg. Producer Randal Martin. Director Kevin Kelley. Assistant director Larry Harpel. Set Fred M. Duer. Lights Robert Fromer. Costumes Caryn Neman. Hair and makeup Sugano. Sound design Robert Murphy, Sound Techniques. Composer, musical director Vince Trombetta. Music the Vince Trombetta Quartet. Technical direction Hap Lawrence. Stage manager Susie Walsh.