Love's Labors Lost: OSF Ashland
Love's Labors Lost is a very odd play, rarely performed because the language is so difficult. I think it probably reads better than it performs unless the cast and direction is extremely good. In reading, I like it for its sense of a kind of delicate bubble of time, all sunlit foolery and innocent youth, and how the ending shows exactly how evanescent the whole thing was. It also has a very beautiful last line.
This production went in more for broad comedy that takes a sudden shift to seriousness in the last ten minutes. Performed on the outdoor Elizabethan theatre, the set featured a lot of party balloons including a giant inflatable pig on the top balcony, and a rock/pop band onstage. Due to smoky conditions, we ended up waiting in the audience for half an hour while whoever was in charge of safety decided whether or not to cancel the show. Finally someone stuck her head out the top window and gave us a thumbs-up to rapturous cheers. The audience and performers were obviously really excited to have the show go on at all (I learned later that multiple performances had been canceled or moved to a local high school due to wildfire smoke, and this was the first time they'd performed on the stage in weeks) and all attempts at getting audience participation went extremely well.
The comedy was really funny, and I liked the songs. There was a lot of fourth wall-breaking, and some anachronistic added joke lines. The king and his buddies, and the princess and her ladies, start the show in all-white outfits (monastic for the men, cute sailor dresses with color accents for the women), and the men take their vows of chastity by planting a colored paint handprint over their hearts. As the play goes on, the colored paint gets used more and more - they paint emblems on their outfits, attack each other with paint, etc - as they increasingly lose sight of their vows, and they end up with rainbow outfits. Those then switch to red for Act II, and to black for the finale.
The king was the same actor who played Henry in Henry V, which we'd seen that afternoon! Getting to see actors in different roles over the same day or couple days is one of my favorite things about OSF, or any repertory theatre. He was charming, but Berowne, Sir Adrian Whatsisface, and his page stole the show. (Our waitress at the pre-show dinner was an understudy for one of the princess's ladies!)
It was generally a very nicely-done and enjoyable production of a difficult play, though it wasn't at all clear who some of the supporting characters were (Holofernes and those guys - I think they're academics?) and IMO, if there is a giant inflatable pig in Act I, it should descend or ascend or be used in some way by the end. Overall it was a lot of fun, but my least favorite of the four plays I saw. I'd like to see a production that was more delicate and less broad - more like my experience of reading the play.
Crossposted to https://rachelmanija.dreamwidth.org/2213644.html. Comment here or there.
This production went in more for broad comedy that takes a sudden shift to seriousness in the last ten minutes. Performed on the outdoor Elizabethan theatre, the set featured a lot of party balloons including a giant inflatable pig on the top balcony, and a rock/pop band onstage. Due to smoky conditions, we ended up waiting in the audience for half an hour while whoever was in charge of safety decided whether or not to cancel the show. Finally someone stuck her head out the top window and gave us a thumbs-up to rapturous cheers. The audience and performers were obviously really excited to have the show go on at all (I learned later that multiple performances had been canceled or moved to a local high school due to wildfire smoke, and this was the first time they'd performed on the stage in weeks) and all attempts at getting audience participation went extremely well.
The comedy was really funny, and I liked the songs. There was a lot of fourth wall-breaking, and some anachronistic added joke lines. The king and his buddies, and the princess and her ladies, start the show in all-white outfits (monastic for the men, cute sailor dresses with color accents for the women), and the men take their vows of chastity by planting a colored paint handprint over their hearts. As the play goes on, the colored paint gets used more and more - they paint emblems on their outfits, attack each other with paint, etc - as they increasingly lose sight of their vows, and they end up with rainbow outfits. Those then switch to red for Act II, and to black for the finale.
The king was the same actor who played Henry in Henry V, which we'd seen that afternoon! Getting to see actors in different roles over the same day or couple days is one of my favorite things about OSF, or any repertory theatre. He was charming, but Berowne, Sir Adrian Whatsisface, and his page stole the show. (Our waitress at the pre-show dinner was an understudy for one of the princess's ladies!)
It was generally a very nicely-done and enjoyable production of a difficult play, though it wasn't at all clear who some of the supporting characters were (Holofernes and those guys - I think they're academics?) and IMO, if there is a giant inflatable pig in Act I, it should descend or ascend or be used in some way by the end. Overall it was a lot of fun, but my least favorite of the four plays I saw. I'd like to see a production that was more delicate and less broad - more like my experience of reading the play.
Crossposted to https://rachelmanija.dreamwidth.org/2213644.html. Comment here or there.