Shakespeare’s romantic comedies are full of stories about men and women who are destined to be together but who either confront or devise all sorts of tests and impediments before they finally give in to love, lust or whatever it is that drives couples to connect and commit.
And so it is with “Love’s Labor’s Lost,” one of Shakespeare’s early works, now receiving a production by Chicago Shakespeare Theater, where visiting director Marti Maraden (former artistic director of Canada’s Stratford Festival) has happily taken full advantage of the play’s French twist.
Yet while the play, as the French might say, is “charmant” in many ways, it is filled with almost compulsive wordplay. It would have benefited greatly had Maraden taken hold of a nice sharp pair of “les ciseaux” (scissors) and clipped the text by a good 20 minutes or more.
Though filled with brainy, good-looking, hormone-driven young men and even brainier, decidedly beautiful, hormone-driven young women (all of whom enjoy playing with language and, when necessary, using it like a rapier), the play grows repetitive. And not only can you see exactly where it is going from very early on, but it takes far too many words to get there.
‘LOVE’S LABOR’S LOST’
Recommended
When: Through March 26
Where: Chicago Shakespeare Theater, 800 E. Grand on Navy Pier
Tickets: $48-$88
Info: (312) 595-5600;
Run time: 2 hours and 25 minutes, with one intermission
Before spinning the story, a few words about the set. Designer Kevin Depinet has conjured an 18th century bower of bliss that owes a debt to Fragonard, the French painter of the Rococo period who planted his beautifully dressed characters in impossibly lush gardens where you can almost smell the perfume of the flowers and feel the gentle breezes that move leaf-laden trees. He puts us in the most elegant courtyard – a place that was made as a playground for hedonism.
But here’s the rub: The King of Navarre (John Tufts) has demanded that his three lords — Berowne (the aptly fiery Nate Burger), Longaville (Madison Niederhauser) and Dumaine (Julian Hester) — swear a draconian oath to scholarship, which not only involves serious study and periods of fasting but also precludes contact with women for three years.
Of course, the men are in their prime, and taking such an extreme vow of chastity seems unreasonable. Berowne is particularly outspoken on the impracticality of it, arguing that “carnal embrace” (as Tom Stoppard refers to it in “Arcadia”) is an essential part of knowledge. Yet eventually even he agrees to take the oath.
And wouldn’t you just know it: Almost immediately, the self-possessed Princess of France (a most elegant turn by Jennie Greenberry), arrives for a visit with the King, and she has brought along her three fetching ladies-in-waiting: Rosaline (an ideally sharp-tongued Laura Rook), Maria (Jennifer Latimore) and Katherine (played by Leryn Turlington at the performance I saw, who was filling in, expertly, for Taylor Blim).
Sparks begin to fly. And while the men initially try to delay any bad behavior by writing seductive sonnets to the objects of their affection, this hardly sustains them. What’s more, the women are no pushovers.
Meanwhile, the hypocritical King makes an example of a pair of illiterate, love-besotted peasants — Costard (the sweetly mischievous Alex Goodrich), and the sassy Jacquenetta (Maggie Portman). And a couple of geezers (David Lively, very funny as a pretentious academic, and his friend, played by Greg Vinkler), engage in their own bloviated wordplay.
At the same time, another language-addled man, Don Adriano de Armado (a zesty turn by Allen Gilmore), a Spaniard who also has come to visit the King, keeps company with his little page, Moth, who is played by Aaron Lamm, a freshman at New Trier High School who all but steals the show with his flawless delivery and beguiling singing voice.
Before it’s all over, the suitors arrive in wacky disguises as comically mustachioed, wildly dancing Muscovites, and the women work their own little gamesmanship of hidden identity.
In the end, the romances are sealed, but Shakespeare also supplies an unexpected twist that gives everyone some breathing space.
The actors (including Steven Pringle, James Newcomb and Drew Johnson), are uniformly skilled and polished and speak every word with clarity and conviction. They also are exquisitely dressed in Christine Poddubiuk’s magnificent costumes. But the takeaway is this: Even Shakespeare can use the services of an editor.
