Love's Labour's Lost
May. 19th, 2006 03:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magidWednesday night I went to the Huntington* production of Love's Labour's Lost, one of Shakespeare's silliest plays. I've seen it performed once before, so I knew that going in. This time it struck me just how foolish the prince is, with his obviously non-reality-based compact he wants his friends/vassals/henchguys to sign. Yes, there's asceticism, but without abrogating his leadership role, it's not going to work.
So, yeah, foolish oath, slightly foolish men, witty and strong women. I don't know whether it's just the Shakespeare I've been seeing recently, but there really are quite a lot of impressive women.
The staging is quite impressive, with a huge library backdrop (the illusory curving shelves echoing the curves of the rest of the theater) giving way to a green-and-blue set. The floor is blue for the ship the ladies arrive on, the walls green for the trees amongst which they camp. There's an impressive use of a smaller model ship 'sailing' through in midadir, steam coming from its stack. And there's a huge tree with much foliage, carefully designed to have many hiding places for overhearing others' secrets.
The costumes put the period as the early 1900s, with lovely long dresses and impressive suits. I totally wanted some of the outfits, along with appropriate events to wear them to :-).
The acting was solid, but mostly not amazing. Competent, rather than inspired, though I was rather impressed with Boyet (played by an actor I recognized from last year's Take Me Out). Some of my reaction is likely colored by sitting far enough back in the balcony that it was hard to fall into the play, especially with the number of people walking in front of me during the performance, and multiplied by a couple of people who were... not good audience members, distracting a lot of the people around them.
* Why can I not remember that this is -ton, not -don?
So, yeah, foolish oath, slightly foolish men, witty and strong women. I don't know whether it's just the Shakespeare I've been seeing recently, but there really are quite a lot of impressive women.
The staging is quite impressive, with a huge library backdrop (the illusory curving shelves echoing the curves of the rest of the theater) giving way to a green-and-blue set. The floor is blue for the ship the ladies arrive on, the walls green for the trees amongst which they camp. There's an impressive use of a smaller model ship 'sailing' through in midadir, steam coming from its stack. And there's a huge tree with much foliage, carefully designed to have many hiding places for overhearing others' secrets.
The costumes put the period as the early 1900s, with lovely long dresses and impressive suits. I totally wanted some of the outfits, along with appropriate events to wear them to :-).
The acting was solid, but mostly not amazing. Competent, rather than inspired, though I was rather impressed with Boyet (played by an actor I recognized from last year's Take Me Out). Some of my reaction is likely colored by sitting far enough back in the balcony that it was hard to fall into the play, especially with the number of people walking in front of me during the performance, and multiplied by a couple of people who were... not good audience members, distracting a lot of the people around them.
* Why can I not remember that this is -ton, not -don?