It would be hard to envisage a more suitably bucolic setting for the Orange Tree’s Shakespearean double bill than its current residency at Thomas’ College Grounds.
OUR VERDICT
Harry Elletson
Both Love’s Labour Lost and its more familiar companion, Much Ado About Nothing, are, in Tom Littler’s productions, set in ‘a small country village on the bend of a river,’ so the locale is picture-perfect.
Littler has ingeniously ‘stitched’ the two plays together to offer a seamless picture of this rural idyll, firstly in the prewar England of 1939 and then its postwar counterpart, in 1945.
Connections between the two have long been mooted (if not proved) and so it seems utterly plausible to weave them together, a feat achieved with dramatic aplomb.
Co-devised with Guildford Shakespeare Company, celebrating their 20th anniversary, the first play, Love’s Labour Lost, opens to the sound of planes overhead, signalling the forces soon to be overtaking the protagonists.
Four fellows arrive to study and enjoy their summer retreat but find themselves sworn to forsake many of life’s pleasures, namely, ‘No Drinking/Cakes/Ladies,’ as an inn sign declares.
Harry Elletson
It’s inevitable that this pledge will be broken, and much mirth ensues, its light-hearted tone ruptured by the intervention of war at the play’s conclusion.
Everything is beautifully staged- the era gorgeously recreated- and there’s much to enjoy, particularly as we get our first glimpses of Benedick Berowne and Beatrice whose verbal sparring enlivens many scenes in Much Ado About Nothing.
The second play sees most of the same characters reunited after six long years of conflict, some reigniting embryonic romances, others like John Longaville, changed for the worse by the ravages of war and (rather inexplicably) intent on thwarting his former friend Claudio’s impending marriage.
All the cast are good, and Matt Pinches’ Constable Dull Dogberry, wittily conjures echoes of Dad’s Army with his ponderous policeman, but James Sheldon’s Benedick and Phoebe Pryce’s Beatrice are a particular draw.
The former’s comedic machinations as he struggles to covertly overhear his friends ( false) conjuring of Beatrice’s love are hilarious: one minute he’s almost hidden in the bushes, then stashed away in a rowing boat or crouched behind the bar; he quite literally throws himself into the scene with full gusto, as he also does when singing a lyrical melody for his lady love, inviting the audience to share his discomfiture at the indignity of it all.
There are many hints of darkness in Much Ado, despite its comedic reputation, but ultimately love prevails.
