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TThe Shakespearean comedian of the last decade of the 16th century each seems to have nothing to do with it. Love’s Labor’s Lost (c 1595) feels the need to continue, the sudden end, the marriages that are in danger are changed suddenly in the future. Much of Ado About Nothing (c 1598) could use a prequel: it’s clear that there’s an interesting history of the conflict between Beatrice and Benedick.
By paying twice for the play, the director Tom Littler explores the opinion of experts (well led by HR Woudhuysen) that it could be, in the words of Hollywood, parts 1 and 2. Some believe that Shakespeare’s play, Love’s Labor’s Won, written in the text but now missing, could have been Ado Much, with Shakespeare’s possible clear “things you have seen.”
Each has a love-hate relationship (Berowne and Rosaline’s decline in Love’s Labor’s Lost is almost replaced by Beatrice and Benedick’s), Mediterranean chancers (Don Armado, Don Pedro) police slaps (Dull / Dogberry) and even the writing of satirical sonnets.
Christopher Luscombe’s 2015 compilation for the RSC went on to rename the second play Love’s Labor’s Won, but kept the original titles. Littler, in a co-production between the Guildford Shakespeare Company and his Orange Tree Richmond theater, maintains the traditional roles but includes casting in 17 roles for 10 theaters: the characters who loved and lost on the eve of war in 1939 are now reunited after the brutality of ado in 1945.
Berowne and Dumain, two of the votaries who predict women and other pleasures in Love’s Labors, now borrow the names of Benedick and Claudio from Much Ado. Similarly, Rosaline and Katherine were recast as Beatrice and Hero. Nathaniel and the footman Holofernes in the first play continue into the second, following the roles of the neighboring stewards George Seacoal and Hugh Oatcake. One cop, Dogberry, nicknamed “Dull”, manages five hours of stage time.
All these films were shown on Saturday, from the furnace in the afternoon to a breezy evening, outside in the gardens of the abandoned Braboeuf Manor in Guildford, adjacent, it would please Dogberry, to the training center for police dogs. (Later, the performances moved to another al fresco venue, Thomas’s College in Richmond Hill.) Neil Irish’s setting is the harbour, where the boat and the bar play many hidden roles in both plays.
With the caveat that no student should use this text as a writing marker, Littler’s cutting and stitching is carefully done. Most of the lines remain, although some are redistributed and there are references to Littler’s writing about “that summer” or things “still” as they are, to continue. Some purists are outraged but what we see as Shakespeare is often fiction, including the errors of the collaborators and copyists.
Most importantly, the marketing of the game works very well, increasing both. Creakier scenes in Love’s Labors are changed to become a reflection of Shakespeare’s famous lovers, and the secret of Beatrice and Benedick’s enmity and the previous events in Much Ado are now filled in clearly – the idea is that, after the couple has promised to marry in six years, he is six years old. And sometimes the magic of Much Ado, especially the random destruction of the Hero, is now caused by the horrors of battle. There are hints of this in the beginning but in this book we see the before and after, Littler’s conceit read well for a television audience.
The cultural disparity is disrupted by making Boyet, a former lord at court, a barrister. As the first play is, even by Shakespeare’s standards, very strong with sexual connotations, this irreverent pastor seems to be in danger of being called to the bishop.
As a combined commitment-phobe, James Sheldon presents Berowne’s great words (“And I love love!”) and Benedick’s (“The world must belong to men”), making them part of the idea of a man whose pride hides disturbing desires. Phoebe Pryce’s Beatrice-Rosaline also finds pain from confidence to broken sarcasm. Chirag Benedict Lobo’s Claudio Dumain makes the Hero’s quivering sensational. And as Dogberry, who often turns a comedic voice, Matt Pinches revels in the village’s promotion to wartime captain, giving him an air of nostalgia reminiscent of Captain Mainwaring in Dad’s Army.
Adding to the pain though the expanded characters and extended timeline, Littler rewrites the comic book with a slapstick combination of swing, fishing rods, dinner gong, ice bucket and beer pump. The Dons would still argue that the two games are one story but, in this game, the argument has won.
