Theatre in Review: Love's Labor's Lost (The Public Theater)

	Steven Skybell and Robert Stanton. Photo: Richard Termine

Love's Labor's Lost is a director's dream -- or nightmare, depending on your point of view. A deeply schizophrenic work -- fizzy and featherbrained at the beginning, grave and gloomy at the final curtain -- it presumably offers endless interpretive possibilities. (More than once, I've seen it given a 1930s spin, as if Shakespeare put in time at Paramount Pictures, grinding out screwball vehicles for Carole Lombard.) Such latitude isn't necessarily a good thing, for, no matter how you try to tailor your approach to the text, it has a way of betraying you. For the Public's current revival, the director, Karin Coonrod, has chosen to double down on the play's self-consciously winsome qualities, resulting in an evening that is full of either (choose one) sprightly laughter or enervating shtick.

I'm sorry to have to vote for the latter category, but there you are. I'm not going to go to bat for Love's Labor's Lost as any kind of masterpiece, but surely it is better to root Shakespeare's thinly plotted comedy -- with its many mechanical reversals of mood -- in some kind of emotional reality. Coonrod, taking the opposite approach, treats it as a giddy hoot, full of pratfalls and interpolated gags, until the play executes its notorious 180-degree turn, when the unexpected announcement of a death causes all four pairs of lovers to undergo a forced separation. Coonrod gets her laughs by hook or by crook -- this production sets some kind of world record for the use of funny voices and eccentric walks -- but, sadly, rarely in concert with Shakespeare.

From the very beginning, when we are introduced to Ferdinand, the King of Navarre, and his trio of companions, who haven chosen to abjure the world for a period of study and meditation, everyone onstage is in an aggressively antic mood, ready to leap, fall, or strike a pose. (Would that they showed a similar facility for speaking Shakespeare's verse.) Of course, the king and his cronies instantly regret their all-male retreat, thanks to the appearance of the Princess of France and her lady companions. Just in case we don't get it, Samira Wiley, as Moth, the page boy, pretends to be Cupid, miming the act of shooting arrows into various characters' hearts. And if there are any remaining souls left in the dark, Nick Westrate, as Berowne, first among the king's men, demonstrates his love struck nature by throwing himself down on the ground and rolling around in the grass. They, however, are pikers compared to Steven Skybell as Holofernes, the pompous schoolmaster and leader of the cast's contingent of clowns; when, in a moment of poetic fancy, Holofernes mimes the death of a deer, Skybell milks the scene so shamelessly that you could extract it and submit it to a one-act play festival.

And so it goes, in a production where the prevailing methodology is to try everything at least once. When Keith Eric Chapelle, as Longavile, another of the king's companions, makes a shocked discovery, he shrieks and faints, like the heroine of a vintage horror film. When Holofernes and his friends plan to stage a masque for the court, Skybell quotes Jerry Orbach's big line from 42nd Street ("The two most glorious words in the English language -- musical comedy!"). Later, the princess and her friends, apropos of nothing, launch into the opening of Beyoncé's "Single Ladies" routine. When the King and his companions try to pass themselves off to the ladies as Muscovites -- admittedly, not one of Shakespeare's cleverest inventions -- they appear in winter hats, humming the 1812 Overture. Before the evening is over, you will understand the term "anything for a laugh" like never before.

It's Shakespeare by way of Godspell, frisky and giggly as all get-out, and, I must admit, it gets plenty of applause -- but, to me, it signals a dismaying lack of interest in getting at the heart of Shakespeare's words. No matter how much work it required -- and I'm guessing that it took plenty -- this method of layering gags on a text is still the lazy director's approach.

The accomplished cast does occasionally deliver, usually in quieter, more intimate moments. Westrate offers a solid reading of the speech in which Berowne convinces his companions to jettison celibacy; he also has a tasty bit when, fearing discovery, he suavely shreds a love letter that has fallen into the wrong hands. Robert Stanton, that smoothest of underplayers, stands out in a pair of roles, as Boyet, the princess' majordomo, and a doltish constable. (In the latter role, his proud announcement, "I am Anthony Dull," provides one of the evening's most endearing moments.) Stephanie DiMaggio is a deadpan delight as Jaquenetta, the sexy, sullen country wench who regards all these high-strung hijinks with a gimlet eye. And when the action shifts into a sadder, more autumnal mood, all the performances improve markedly.

This is a Public Lab production, which means production values are reined in, which is not a bad thing. John Conklin's setting consists of a square of AstroTurf; a chalk drawing, on the upstage wall, of some kind of Renaissance arcana (complete with concentric circles and Latin phrases); and a row of theatre seats-- which, as it happens, is more than enough. Brian H. Scott pours cool morning sunlight over the proceedings, adding to the mood of festivity. In contrast, Oana Botez Ban's costumes -- the production's most elaborate design aspect -- are informed by too many affectations. When the King and his men are first seen, they're dressed in grey suits with shorts and knee-high socks, looking like overage British public school boys. I'm still wondering why Reg E. Cathey, as Don Adriano de Armado, the Spanish knight, and Francis Jue, as Sir Nathaniel, the curate, are wearing pleated maxi-skirts. If anything, DiMaggio's Jaquenetta costume undercuts the actress' considerable physical charms.

Such eccentric notions are central to a production that announces its comic intentions loudly and constantly. Coonrod has assembled a formidable company for this Love's Labor's Lost, and, under different circumstances, they might conceivably make something of the script's frothy comedy and hairpin turns. Here, they're too busy winking at the audience to get much of anything done.--David Barbour