The performance this critic saw was the production's second preview.
While watching the Stratford Festival production of Love's Labour's Lost directed by Peter Pasyk, two past productions were at the forefront of my mind: the first was Brenda DeVita's 2022 production of the same play at American Players Theatre in Spring Green, WI, and the second was the 2022 Stratford Festival production of Hamlet, starring Amaka Umeh, and also directed by Pasyk. This Stratford Labour's suffers by comparison to both. Pasyk's Hamlet was written in divine fire, Umeh delivered the perfect Hamlet for the "not okay" generation, and you could sense the zeal of the whole production team conspiring in unison to make this Hamlet kick serious ass. The same was true, albeit in a different key, for DeVita's Love's Labour's Lost: a dense comedy packed with academic arcana became sparklingly alive as an uproarious and bittersweet crowd-pleaser. Both of these productions are a tough act to follow, as they constitute the best theatre I've seen since COVID.
And of course, there's the matter of the preview. Obviously reviewing a preview is both cruel and unusual, but such is the nature of the Stratford Festival repertory schedule: while you're in town, you might bump into one. I could say that this rendition of Love's Labour's Lost, Shakespeare's four-brides-for-four-brothers romcom with the surprise sad ending, lacks visible enthusiasm from the creative team, and that might be both true and profoundly unfair. Sure, things like pace and volume and staging coherence and curious lighting-looks and overall drive can be adjusted on the road to opening. I don't know that even if they get there you'll be able to care about any individual romance of any of the four couples on the way, but I may be wrong.
The show has some chuckles. Amaka Umeh appears as Rosaline and as a result boy do you wish Rosaline had more to do. Michael Spencer-Davis as Holofernes staring daggers at the Herculean over-acting of Moth (Christo Graham) is inedible. Tyrone Savage is well on his way to concocting a rakish convertite out of Berowne, the leader of the wolfpack of four dudes who swear "to fast, to study, and to see no women" right before four ladies of France arrive and put that vow to rest.
Nothing about this Love's Labour's Lost is likely to offend, you just wouldn't call it a passion project. If such a one were happening, whatever messiness of actors walking backwards or uncemented intentions, you would still be able to feel a pressing urgent need that this story be told in front of you tonight. In spite of the lack of an intermission, rapidity is not the name of the game. Hopefully the show's roots take hold and all ends as it should. Though I also really don't know why any production would keep the passage between Maria and Rosaline about Maria's sister dying, with its implication that Rosaline and Maria actually hate each other; it's a real vibe-killer.
Oh, and the fact that a woman's cell phone went off at the tail end of Berowne's majestic Act 4, Scene 3 aria declaring the beauty and necessity of love probably didn't help. It was like six or seven rings. Yikes.
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