A curtain never went up and lights never went down when the University Musical Society (UMS) brought the Shakespeare Globe’s perky Love’s Labour’s Lost to the Power Center in Ann Arbor. Musicians played in the lobby before the show began, and actors garbed in lush Renaissance gowns fed us grapes during intermission. Spectators howled with laughter at bawdy bits and vulgarisms that clarified the text. In this frankly theatrical production, actors used the aisles as entrances and playing spaces—one found his way to a spectator’s lap for a time—and we felt so much a part of the rollicking event that by the time we stood as one to applaud, it felt as though we were applauding ourselves.
This is the first time I’ve had the opportunity to see the Globe under Dominic Dromgoole’s direction. About six years ago, UMS brought in the Globe’s delightful Twelfth Night, staged by then artistic director Mark Rylance, who cast men in all the female roles, as had been done back in the day.
Dromgoole, who directed this production, gave no sense that he wanted to recreate anything from the past. Actors spent time around a table before physical work began so they could be on the same page, with a shared understanding of each line, and then they went wild. As for larger concepts, Dromgoole says he has none. The company works collectively, and he doesn’t try to put a big idea ahead of the process. For this play, he was careful not to let the dark end of the play intrude on the lightness that precedes. “It’s always the great crime to start at the end … [of a play] that’s full of optimism,” he said to a group that gathered for a talk after one performance.
Composer Clair van Kampen says there are two elements that set the tone: the characters are young, and the better part of the play occurs outdoors, allowing a story that involves a king and princess to unravel unencumbered by the formality of English court life.
As the Globe Turns
The trickiest business about touring, most companies agree, is adapting a show quickly to a new space. In London, they do this production in an outdoor space. In the United States, they are adjusting to indoor acoustics and assorted stage configurations. Jonathan Fensom’s whimsical scenery seems relatively easy to move and set up, but you would think that actors engaged in fast physical comedy might find it difficult to move comfortably about a new space. Maybe because the actors have worked together for a time, and not just on this show, their comfort with each other makes it easier to become comfortable in new surroundings. It makes little sense to single out any performance in a company so tight, but I would advise readers to go anywhere round the globe to see Fergal McElherron’s Costard. Just saying.
Does the company have to adjust to American audiences? It didn’t in Ann Arbor, and I doubt it will—not when a production is as lucid and as over-the-top funny as this one is, and audiences here get it so easily.
I’m constantly impressed by the University Musical Society’s ability to find productions that remind us what theater is and can be. Next up: UMS brings the Maly Drama Theater from St. Petersburg to do Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya.
Next for the Globe’s Love’s Labour’s Lost: Philadelphia PA, Berkeley CA, Davis CA, Santa Barbara CA, Santa Monica CA, Holyoke MA, and New York, NY.
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