“Love’s Labour’s Lost” cast
“We are wise girls to mock our lovers so.”
Maybe. Maybe not, as the lovers learn in “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” on stage from Gamut Theatre Group’s 32nd annual Free Shakespeare in the Park, running through June 14 at Harrisburg’s Reservoir Park.
It’s a fast-paced romp through the timeless battle of wits between genders, packed with ill-timed vows, enough tongue-twisting repartee to fill three “Gilmore Girls” episodes, and the masks, literal and figurative, that we wear for love.
Director J. Clark Nicholson updates Shakespeare’s 17th-century country of Navarre to the University of Navarre in the 1980s. The campus is packed with big hair and Brat Pack icons — our heroine in a Molly Ringwald hat. Frat boys in Chuck Taylors. A preening visitor in pink-tinged, rolled-sleeve Sonny Crockett sport coat. A Valley Girl in pleated, acid-washed jeans (how I miss them).
Bear with me on the plot summary. Shakespeare’s King of Navarre (Brendan Wolf) is a sort of fraternity president, pressuring three frat brothers into vowing to give up women while they study with him for three years.
Surprise. Four women appear, in the form of a French princess and her sorority sisters, there to negotiate a land deal. Complications ensue as characters high-born, low-born, and in between conspire and connive.
The three friends are led by Berowne, played by Alex Winnick. Tapping into his character’s quick wit and sharp reasoning, Berowne commands his scenes and embodies the “merry madcap lord” whose every jest is a word and every word a jest.
Berowne initially laments the anguish of love but convincingly transforms into the one leading his bros into breaking their hasty vows of abstinence. When Berowne unmasks the fecklessness of his compatriots – “Now step I forth to whip hypocrisy” – only to be confronted with his own, Winnick deftly handles the justification to abandon their doomed pledge.
“Young blood,” he insists, “doth not obey an old decree.”
In this play, love interests are also foils, and Berowne fences gracefully with the sprightly Hope Mackenzie as Rosaline. “Love’s Labour’s Lost” is considered one of Shakespeare’s punniest plays – regrettably inscrutable to 21st-century ears, but delivered brightly enough by a well-rehearsed cast that we get the gist. Lovers must spar before they spark.
Nicholson and the production team weave nostalgic odes to the 1980s throughout the goings-on. A boombox carried on a shoulder. A dullard campus security guard, aptly named Dull, fiddling with a Rubik’s cube. Interval music that seems incongruously contemporary – but wait. That’s an acoustic cover of “Eye of the Tiger.”
When the men disguise themselves as “Muscovites” – as in, visitors from distant Moscow – they appear, of course, in voluminous Red Army coats and perform a hilariously goofy Russian dance.
Standouts in the large cast include Elizabeth Hood as the princess, growing into her role from spunky expatriate to the regal voice of wisdom among the headstrong lovers. Joe Regan adds appeal to Costard, the Shakespearean clown, by giving him a jaunty self-confidence, even when he makes boneheaded mistakes.
Kaylee Kramer as Boyet delights in her role as a sorority-mom type, guardian of her girls and cunning spy uncovering the men’s plot to – well, I’m still not sure what that disguised-as-Muscovites scene was supposed to mean, but it’s great fun for a summer night under the stars.
And, just like other Shakespeare works, there’s a play within the play. Here, the non-lovers present “The Nine Worthies,” but their play doesn’t hold up as well as the silly “Pyramus and Thisbe” of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” or the searing plot device of “Hamlet.” We just aren’t familiar with the jokes ringing around the heroes of ancient times, but the cast’s antics and Shakespeare’s own bits for bad actors provide a few chuckles.
This is the scene, too, where the pompous School Master Holofernes – played by Brennen Dickerson with delicious affectation, which he would pronounce “ah-feck-tah-see-on” — gets his comeuppance, even if it comes across more like extended bullying by the cool kids.
Where Shakespeare ended his play with a wistful ditty on the seasonal course of love, Nicholson gives his cast the equally appropriate “No One is to Blame,” the ‘80s Howard Jones anthem on the futility of love. Shakespeare himself would nod in approval at the idea that “you can dip your foot in the pool, but you can’t take a swim,” as he dispatches his lovers to live amicably ever after.
“Love’s Labour’s Lost,” Free Shakespeare in the Park, Gamut Theatre Group, performed at Reservoir Park, 100 Concert Drive, Harrisburg. The lovers spar through June 14. Bring a chair or blanket to sit on the hillside. Attendance is free, but donations are welcome. For information, visit www.gamuttheatre.org/fsip.
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