Love's Labour's Lost (review)

In a year when British Shakespearean performance was dominated by David Tennant's starring roles in the RSC's Hamlet and Love's Labour's Lost, other excellent productions of those plays were sadly neglected in the media. While the Guardian published synopses to help first-time audience members flocking to the RSC to understand Love's Labour's Lost, Peter Hall brought a far more low-key-and more scholarly-production of the same play to the new Rose Theatre in Kingston.

Love's Labour's Lost was the first in-house production at the Rose, a theatre that Hall was instrumental in setting up. The circular building is an ideal house for the playing of Shakespeare; its arrangement echoes the Globe, but with apron stage rather than thrust, improving sightlines while retaining intimacy. Audience members sit on cushions in the pit, rather than stand, creating a playhouse that feels comfortable and modern while evoking the past.

Like the playhouse Hall has invested in (he remains Director Emeritus), this production understood and engaged with the past while simultaneously reinventing it for the present. The production's main strength came from Hall's faith in the ability of the text of Love's Labour's Lost to be funny to a modern audience without dilution; rather than focus on added business or rewriting, the words of the play were simply spoken and acted clearly by a cast who understood what they were saying. Here, Latin phrases and classical allusions became easy and natural.

The production's intelligence was epitomized by William Chubb's hysterical performance as Holofernes. This relatively young Holofernes was an instantly recognisable figure, a schoolteacher keen to show off his learning but also convinced that he was a comic genius. In this simple characterisation, Chubb effectively recreated the figure of the "pedant" in everyday modern terms. Infused with nervous energy and the desire to be admired, Holofernes was more endearing than irritating, ultimately foolish but good-natured about it. His wordplay and poems were a form of self-challenge: he slowly drew out the words as he extemporized, and applauded himself as the words formed witty conclusions. Similarly, his remarks on Armado's ridiculous use of language were full of enjoyment rather than snootiness. Additional comedy was provided by Paul Bentall's sycophantic Sir Nathaniel, who spent most of his time on stage gazing with open mouth at Holofernes, rapt with admiration for his companion's cleverness. Holofernes, predictably, basked before his captive audience.

Sally Scott as Katherine, Nelly Harker as Maria, Rachel Pickup as the Princess of France and Susie Trayling as Rosaline in the Rose Theatre's 2008 production of Love's Labour's Lost, directed by Peter Hall. Photo by Nobby Clark.

Don Armado, played by Peter Bowles, commendably did not rely on a Spanish accent for laughs. This gallant was instead self-consciously theatrical, affecting love and despair with comically exaggerated gestures. He was ably supported by Kevin Trainor's Moth, a young and pretty boy devoted to his master. The bond between Armado and his camp attendant was filled with the rhetoric of love and a physical intimacy through embraces, though it shied away from the sexual. Trainor's performance was exceptional in its verbal dexterity; this Moth ran rings around his master and Holofernes in disputes, and his mocking impersonations of other characters were uncanny.

Peter Bowles as Don Adriano...