Review - LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST; a Rowdy and Mirthful Summer Night

As one of The Bard's "earlier, funnier" plays, those who look at Shakespeare through a scholar's eye tend to regard Love's Labour's Lost - with its infusion of literary allusions, silly puns and high-minded spoofing of academia, much of which would be unrecognizable to modern audiences - as an attempt to elicit guffaws from 1590's educated nerd boys.

So it's a rather appropriate source for musicalization by Michael Friedman (score) and Alex Timbers (book and direction), those smarty-pants hipsters who strained early 19th Century American politics through the angst of emo rock in Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson.

Their crazily antic new show premiering at the Delacorte certainly elicits guffaws from 21st Century musical theatre nerds, mimicking Shakespeare's text with its frequent allusions to Broadway's past, and also pleases the uninitiated with a rowdy collection of musical moments exploring the youthful battle of mind vs. hormones.

The setup is Shakespearian but the setting is 2013 at designer John Lee Beatty's fabulous faux-rustic Berkshires lodge at the edge of a college town. Beneath a banner welcoming back the class of 2008, there's a hot tub, a spacious courtyard with a fountain and friendly pub and live karaoke bar.

"Young men are supposed to have sex / And get drunk / And sleep on Sunday morning 'til brunch," sings Berowne (an intellectually hot Colin Donnell) in an unsuccessful attempt to resist the wish of Ferdinand, King of Navarre (Daniel Breaker, anchoring the madness), that he and buds Longaville (smartly tap dancing Bryce Pinkham) and Dumaine (sweetly nerdy Lucas Near-Verbrugghe) join him in an oath to spend the next three years living inside the lodge, absolving themselves of the frivolity that has controlled their lives in the five years since graduation by abstaining from women, alcohol and other pleasures in life in order to expand their minds through contemplation, scholarly discussion and, "readings of Elizabethan plays in their original uncut form without the addition of new and completely unnecessary songs."

They might have made it past the first night without a hitch if not for a visit from the king's old fling, a French princess (Patti Murin, terrific as a giddy party babe) arriving on official business with her girl crew of Rosaline (Maria Thayer), Maria (Kimiko Glenn) and Katherine (Audrey Lynn Weston), all of whom just happen to have had flings with one of the king's three mates.

But before that plot has a chance to develop, out of the hot tub pops class of '08 foreign exchange student, Don Armondo (madly passionate Caesar Samayoa) proclaiming his love for bar maid Jaquenetta (cool and detached Rebecca Naomi Jones). The convoluted plot contains business involving messages sent to the wrong people, a fellow's not so adorable fetish for cats, an appearance by a fake East German performance art troupe (I told you there were frequent allusions to Broadway's past.) and comically intellectual patter by the Mutt and Jeff-like team of Rachel Dratch and Jeff Hiller, as professors Holofernes and Nathaniel.

With so many characters and relationships to cover, Love's Labour's Lost charges through its 100 minutes, often resembling a revue more than a fully-realized book musical with its entertaining boy band, girl group, marching band and chorus line bits. Jones makes ravishing work out of the score's best song, "Love's A Gun," a serious reflection using Shakespeare's technique of letting lower born characters comment on the action of their higher born counterparts. Berowne is the best developed of the characters, thanks in part to an excellent soliloquy song about rejecting the refined model of the man he was raised to be and embracing the romantic clichés in his heart. The show could stand a few more empathetic moments like those.

And Friedman and Timbers might have been better off cutting Shakespeare's final scene, which abruptly changes the tone of the play. As it stands, the elaborately mounted penultimate song tricks the audience into thinking it's the merry finale and the actual end, though loyal to the source, is too much of a downer for this boisterous frolic.

Photos by Joan Marcus: Top: Bryce Pinkham, Colin Donnell, Lucas Near-Verbrugghe; Bottom: Patti Murin, Audrey Lynn Weston, Maria Thayer and Kimiko Glenn.

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