Sunday Telegraph 20th
August 1978
According to Dr Johnson, many passages in “Love’s Labour’s Lost are ‘mean, childish and vulgar’ and ‘ought not to have been exhibited to a virgin queen.’ John Barton’s exquisitely delicate production at Stratford makes this judgement seem even more eccentric than usual.
With the aid of his designer, Ralph Koltai, he from
the first brings a nip of autumn to this work of Shakespeare’s spring. In the park
where the King of Navarre and his three companions vow celibacy in order to
devote themselves to ‘a little academe, still and contemplative,’ the trees are
already sere; so that when the Princess of France and her attendant ladies
arrive on their mission and are refused entry to the palace, one guesses that
they will soon be shivering in their tents.
Shakespeare devised no play simpler in plot or more
complex in verbal wit. The four men, and above all Berowne, are initially as
much infatuated with language as with the new arrivals. Only at the close when
mortality – in the shape of a messenger dressed all in black and bringing news
of the King of France’s death – suddenly obtrudes, do they realise that they
must learn to bridge the gap between words and feelings.
Our best Shakespearean clown, Richard Griffiths,
amply justifies his unexpected casting as the King. As Berowne, Michael
Pennington brilliantly conveys a courtier drunk on his own conceits – as
Shakespeare must have been at the time of writing. There is an enchanting Moth
from Jo James (his father, Emrys, will have to look to his dramatic laurels)
and a beautifully judged Don Armado – his natural pedantry at war with his
infatuation with a country slut – from Michael Hordern.
Jane Lapotaire flashes mischievously as Rosaline –
regarded by some critics as Shakespeare’s portrait of his Dark Lady. But Carmen
Du Sautoy’s Princess, bespectacled and gawky, suggests a character from Angela
Brazil rather than from Renaissance France.
Apart from the misjudgement of having the final
‘When daisies pied …’ recited rather than sung, this production is so
unfailingly inventive and yet loyal to the playwright, that I regard it as the
best in my memory.
The Financial
Times, 14th April 1979, B.A. Young
Welcome indeed is John Barton’s pretty production
from Stratford, the most enjoyable “Love’s Labour’s Lost” that I have ever
seen. Realising that the polysyllabic jocularities of the would-be
intellectuals are no longer very funny (though in their time they no doubt
raised the same superior smiles as Pseuds’ Corner does today), Mr Barton has
concentrated in the less affected parts of the play.
‘Finding’ not putting: none of the evening’s laughs
plays against the text, most are positively drawn from it. To make the King of
Navarre and the Princess of France a pair of bespectacled highbrows who resolve
into ordinary student jokes as soon as the initial drive is relaxed is original
but valid, and it gives Richard Griffiths as the King an opportunity for one of
the best comedy performances in town at the moment. Carmen Du Sautoy as the
Princess has not the same chances; her part is a more serious one: but she
meshes perfectly with Mr Griffiths.
Inevitably, emphasis is thrown on the rougher
characters. There never was such an enjoyable Costard, as Allan Hendrick’s,
eager to take over every scene like a barrack-room comic (though he still
doesn’t know has to pronounce ‘half-penny’). In some curious way, David Lyons’
taciturn Dull contrives to be funnier than Paul Brooke’s Holofernes and David
Suchet’s Nathaniel, funny as they are within the limits of Pseuds’ Corner
lines.
It is Tony Church’s bad luck to come up against an
outstandingly good boy as Moth (Jo James last night, though he is to alternate
with another). While Mr Church fails to find much savour in his sesquipedalian
pomposities, Mr James both in his pert dialogue and in the singing-lesson with
which Mr Barton has fleshed out Shakespeare’s single obscure word ‘Concolinet,’
reveals himself already as a talented comedian.
At the romantic heart of the play are Michael
Pennington’s Berowne and Jane Lapotaire’s Rosaline. Mr Pennington is now an
exceedingly good young actor who, if the current theatrical fashion had not
outlawed such people, would be a star; he has all the best poetry in the play
and delivers it magically. Rosaline has no such opportunities, but Miss
Lapotaire, as aristocratic as playful, leads a charming trio of
ladies-in-waiting.
The comedy is never forced: it all grows out of
natural occupations, instinctive gestures apt at the moment – though Mr
Griffiths’ business with his bouncing sword, that seems to surprise him as much
as us, is something of a wonder. (Can he always do it?) The final rustic
entertainment gets no more out of hand than it should, and is touchingly called
to order by Paul Brooke’s gentle ‘This is not generous, not gentle’ to the
unmannerly Navarrais lords. As the light fades on Ralph Koltai’s lovely
woodland scene, and the songs about the cuckoo and the owl come to an end – spoken
not sung – the sound of a real owl comes from afar to finish a lovely evening
on a properly sentimental note.
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