Review: Love’s Labour’s Lost, Bridewell Theatre

There is nothing new in giving one of Will’s plays a musical makeover, but they tend to be the well-known ones. Love’s Labour’s Lost, however, is one of those I confess I regularly mix up with ‘Measure for Measure’, ‘Much Ado about Nothing’. So, folks, you would be proud of me, I actually re-read the play! And alas it is not one of his finest – lopsided, very uneven with forced comedy, so it was with bated breath that I approached this musical version, written in New York in 2013, and here revived by an amateur group SEDOS under the watchful directorial eye of Owen Thomas James.

I needn’t have worried as even before the evening got going, there seemed to be a party in full swing on stage – an end-of-year prom possibly?

That initial energy infected the whole show, aided and abetted by a six-piece band, no less, marshalled seamlessly by MD Maria Hallows with mics for most of the cast. Basically, no expense was spared for this ‘amateur’ group – the adjective belies the utter professionalism of the singers and performers. First off , the voices are stupendous to a man and to a woman, and fit the pop-rock style of the attractive catchy songs with some great humour added – I especially loved the big dance tap high-kicking routine (memories of Chorus Line), and who can forget the mustachioed German boy-band number with its fitting hackneyed routine – One Direction?? 

I ought to give you a little context though. So, the premise is the King of Navarre and three gentlemen are sworn to three years of abstinence, no women, hardly any food and just study, study, study. Well, that didn’t last long, as you can imagine, and even the King falls foul as he swoons over the French Princess who has arrived to finalise a deal between the two kingdoms. The gentlemen are all unmasked as oath-breakers, so they decide to disguise themselves again in order to deliver their love sonnets to the Princess and her ladies who they have fallen for.

I say “gentlemen” and “King” and “Princess” and “ladies”, but we are really watching ‘High School Musical’ meets ‘Shakespeare in Love’, so I’ll say dudes and gals, plotting and conniving. The writer keeps pretty roughly to the original, though I think they could have dispensed completely with Dr Nathaniel and Holofernes, the Latin-speaking boring pedants who in this version don’t seem to add much to proceedings. I could complain of a lack of focus sometimes, a slight tendency to caricature, a need for more palpable dramatic stakes (will my love for my gal be found out, and what will be the consequences?). But I won’t, because not only do these dudes and gals sing excellently, they are impressive deliverers of the Shakespeare text they have to say – natural and believable. The happy end is also avoided, which exactly mirrors the play, namely that the princess’s father, the King of France dies, and there is a reflective moment where she decides that because the dudes have so manifestly not kept to their sworn statements right at the beginning, the gals need at least a year to see if their paramours’ commitment to them is genuine.

Indeed, it is the gals who call the shots here – an early example of girl power, surely!

The finale is all the company – a mighty 25 of them – singing together in recognition of the serious task ahead. The whole evening was such an explosion of FUN, highly professional “amateurs” giving us great singing, great performances, and great pizzazz. That’s what I call Entertainment!!

Directed by Owen Thomas james
Musical director: Maria Hallows
Design by Mickey Dimitrova
Choreography by Mia Mann
Lighting by Ruth Luckins
Produced by Adrian Hau
Sound by Adam Coppard & Adam Lockett
Costumes by Annie Houseago

Love’s Labour’s Lost plays at Bridewell Theatre until Saturday 19 September.