Summary 
Light romantic comedy, traditionally set and cast, and played by the numbers. Dampered by uneven supporting performances, although an outrageous Armado steals the show. Appealing leads and a fittingly somber (and musical) conclusion.
Design
Directed by Sandra Zielinski. Set by Peter Beudert. Costumes by Kathryn Rohe. Lights by Julie Mack. Sound by Aaron Paolucci.
Cast
Robert Gerard Anderson (Boyet), Brandon Breault (Longaville), Walter Brody (Dull), Crystal A. Dickinson (Maria), Heather Freer (Katherine), Thomas Clinton Haynes (Moth), Phillip Earl Johnson (Berowne), David Kortemeier (Don Armado), Ryan Lee (Ferdinand), Rebecca MacLean (Rosaline), Andy Sinclair (Costard), Jack McLaughlin-Gray (Holofernes), Carrie Lee Patterson (Princess), Jason Schiessl (Dumaine), Ned Schmidtke (Nathaniel).
Analysis
The Illinois Shakespeare Festival opens with Love's Labour's Lost presented outdoors at twilight. The Festival's youthful cast provides a fitting match for this frothy early Shakespeare concerning frustrated young love affairs. In the hands of director Sandra Zielinski, the light romantic comedy works well, but perhaps more importantly, so does the solemn conclusion with its emphasis on the lovers' much-needed maturity.
Trees and branches made of copper line the upstage perimeter of the stage, and copper mobiles with metal leaves twist and chime in the summer breeze. Twin columns stand at either side of the main entrance upstage center, and a bronze telescope stands mounted in the gallery overhead. A metal ramp at stage right leads across a narrow twisting brook of puddled water that spans the width of the stage and separates the audience from the playing area. The overall effect suits the themes of the play: Navarre seems modern and sophisticated, but cold and distanced from the outside world.
Zielinski and her cast capture a merry tone for the inexperienced characters. The production begins with a pair of high-spirited fencing matches, as four young men - the King of Navarre and his three friends - wave rapiers with gusto and prance with shouts across the stage. The bouts end with Ferdinand disarming each of the three Navarre men in turn; the young nobles are then dressed with tailed waistcoats by silent servants. Moments later, after they have sworn devotion to study, one impishly flings books backward over his head from a small table at stage left. The others catch them, and they all make a perfunctory attempt at serious learning for an uncomfortable moment before giving up.
The sad-eyed Princess and her three courtiers are also portrayed as likeable but supercilious youth. In 2.1, Boyet, in top hat and tails, tiptoes through the puddles in the downstage stream to announce that Ferdinand will meet them "in the field," and the ladies slowly turn in unison and look offstage with comic disdain. After Berowne coughs to interrupt the King's kissing of the Princess's hand - he may not touch a woman - the ladies break into girlish giggles as the love-struck men leave, then blow teasing kisses to the equally enamored Princess. Their 5.2 pajama-party pillow fight is interrupted by the arrival of their Muscovite courtiers, attired in ridiculous Russian clothing - fur hats, masks, boots, and beads - and they laugh with delight as the men kick-dance, shout "hey!" and clap along to music before breaking into absurdly thick accents.
Festival veterans Philip Johnson and Rebecca MacLean portray Berowne and Rosaline. The silly behavior of their characters belies their apparent physical maturity, and the two share fine chemistry from their recent co-starring Festival efforts. Johnson's wry Berowne is the most mature of Navarre's court - the "lord of folded arms" - and his white military jacket is heavy with war decorations, but in 3.1 he behaves like a schoolboy in puppy love. He must chase Costard across the stage to ask the clown to deliver a love letter, and when he boyishly hesitates - offering Costard the letter, then taking it back, over and over - Costard must snatch it from him. When Berowne exits, MacLean's Rosaline prances onstage after him, takes aim with a pretend bow, and shoots him with a feigned Cupid arrow.
Zielinski has mixed success with the minor comic characters, as their exaggerated antics tend to distract from rather than enhance the exploits of the lovers. The "base minnow" Costard is played as a scarecrow-like clown with a high-pitched voice, easily confused and always in a hurry, and Constable Dull is a gruff bobby in a full-length blue coat and big sailing hat, and he spends 4.2 grumbling to himself while fishing in the stream. Equity Chicago actors play the "bookmen" for laughs, Holofernes as an Einstein-like pedant with spectacles, a quavering voice and askew white hair, and Nathaniel as a gaseous red-nosed cleric. Holofernes makes unintended sexual jokes about his female students - "I will put it to them" - and Nathaniel becomes weepy in 4.2 when reading Berowne's sonnet, then fans the air behind him with his Bible when he breaks wind.
A hyper-melancholy Armado outshines the other minor characters. The long-haired and mustached Spaniard first appears in 1.2, sliding out to center stage on a wheeled platform and playing dreadful notes on an oboe. An outrageous Latin accent - all heavy, heaving "h" sounds as he seeks "piss of mind" - is delivered with a natural subtlety that draws much laughter. He wears an earring and a neck chain, reclining in 1.2 anguish - he is "in luff" with a base wench - upon a pillowed chaise lounge. Armado's physical comedy steals a variety of scenes: he chases Moth with the oboe then cradles the servant like an infant and caresses his hair in a 1.2 demonstration of his passion; his swivel-hipped 3.1 dance concludes with a pinch of Moth's bottom; and he comically struggles to remove his gloves and slap the offending Costard in 5.2. The hapless Armado - he ad-libs an anguished 1.2 pause while a low-flying aircraft passes overhead and kisses his 3.1 poem to Jaquenetta so incessantly that a frustrated Costard must tear it away from him - earns the strongest ovation at the production's end.
Zielinski fuels the featherweight story with comedic flourishes. Longaville foolishly conceals himself in the watery puddle beneath the metal bridge to observe Dumaine wax idiotically over his love for Katherine, the two pinch each other's arms like schoolchildren while being upbraided by Ferdinand, and Nathaniel sticks his fingers in his ears so as to prevent eavesdropping in 5.1, then cricks his neck when the fingers are yanked away.
The always difficult 5.2 Nine Worthies performance is an exercise in overtly self-indulgent theatrics - Hercules' defeat of the serpent is Moth struggling with his own snake hand-puppet - but pointedly, Zielinski reveals the young lovers' over-proud mockery of people who are just as silly as themselves. The sobering finale - "Jack hath not Jill" - arrives with the herald Marcade, dressed in stately black, including a top hat, who announces the death of the King of France from high in the gallery.
The production concludes with this intrusion of reality into the romantic fantasy kingdom, and the playing of the winter song - "nightly sings the staring owl" - accompanies the somber separation of the lovers and the return of tokens. But, due to Zielinski's deft emphasis on the characters' indulgent youth, there remain the promise of maturity as well as future - and deeper - romance, in due time.
Note: A version of this article was edited and published in Shakespeare Bulletin, Vol.19, No.4, Fall 2001.