Shakespeare’s ‘Labour’s’ Lost

Romance lends a dreamy sophistication to the early Shakespeare comedy “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” while earthy humor lets out a good, loud belch every now and again. Sacred meets profane, and the characters teach, by example, how to keep the two in balance.

The play is a bit of a slog, though. Its comic and linguistic conventions are firmly rooted in their day, and the people and the notions being skewered are little-remembered.

Aware of these challenges, the classical repertory company A Noise Within and director Michael Winters have devised a production that brings the text’s universal qualities to the fore, while finding recognizable equivalents for the rest. Yet even these smart ideas, executed by some of the company’s best actors, can’t make the play manageable. The audience gets too little return on its considerable investment of brain cells.

Scholars think that Shakespeare meant this play as a dig at Sir Walter Raleigh’s scientific discussion groups and as a rejoinder to George Chapman’s poem “Shadow of Night,” which extolled a life of contemplation and study.

The story is set in Navarre, where the king (Stephen Rockwell) has turned his court into a scholarly academy and tries to keep minds focused on learning by enjoining his closest companions--Berowne (Louis Lotorto), Longaville (Guilford Adams) and Dumaine (Ron Morehouse)--to forswear female company for three years. Almost immediately, the enchanting princess of France (Jill Hill) arrives on diplomatic business with three smart, beautiful attendants--Rosaline (Ann Marie Lee), Maria (Erika Ackerman) and Katharine (Kelly Anne Ford)--in tow. With them around, monastic scholarship doesn’t stand a chance.

Today’s theatergoers tend to be jarred by the play’s quickly disproved premise, and they’re baffled by its elaborate wordplay, which makes fun of the court’s language as well as the clumsier efforts of the oddball Spaniard Armado (Robertson Dean), the pedantic Holofernes (William Mesnik), the fawning Sir Nathaniel (James Otis) and the dim-bulb Costard (Richard Soto).

To help the audience along, Winters turns the story into a fairy tale that unfolds in a color-saturated, storybook kingdom (evoked by Michael C. Smith’s set and James Taylor’s lighting). The characters wear modern clothing (designed by Alex Jaeger), which helps connect this fantasy world to our own.

Gucci purses, Vogue magazines, Tiffany gift boxes and other familiar landmarks are strewn throughout the action, and the king hides a naked Cupid statue under a veil, much like the recent covering of statues at the Department of Justice.

Sharp acting further amplifies the humor, especially whenever Dean is onstage to deliver his Salvador Dali-esque take on Armado, complete with the painter’s famous long, upturned mustache and pinched, wide-eyed expressions.

Good work, to little avail. There’s a reason this play is rarely performed today.

“Love’s Labour’s Lost,” A Noise Within, 234 S. Brand Blvd., Glendale. The play returns to the repertory after the opening of “Bus Stop”: March 24, 2 and 7 p.m.; March 29, 8 p.m.; March 30, 2 and 8 p.m.; April 14, 2 and 7 p.m.; April 17-18, 8 p.m.; April 28, 2 and 8 p.m.; May 1 and 10, 8 p.m.; May 11, 2 and 8 p.m. Ends May 11. $28-$32. (818) 240-0910. Running time: 2 hours, 50 minutes.