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Date: 8th October 2008 | Venue: Courtyard
Theatre |
Jonathan Miller notoriously dismissed David Tennant as "the man from Doctor Who" and virtually accused the RSC of selling
out to fame when they hired him to play Hamlet. Miller was left looking foolish on several counts. Tennant's triumphant performance was (and still is) a reminder that
this Dr Who is a classically trained actor with two previous seasons in Stratford under his belt. It also exposed the snobbery
of supposing that fans of Doctor Who aren't the sort who could ever become fans of Shakespeare. That fallacy seems even dafter in the light of this latest Tennant-related project – a high-spirited, thoughtful
production of Love's Labour's Lost directed with fizz and finesse by Greg Doran. This historically earlier play is a delight,
but linguistically it is one of the trickiest of the Bard's comic works. Wonderfully funny at the fleet-footed wit, the physical clowning and the moment's of real intellectual depth, Tennant portrays
Berowne, one of the three young lords who, with the King, take an oath that they will spend three years in study, while foreswearing
the company of the opposite sex. Such high-minded abstinence is, of course, entirely against the spirit of comedy, and comeuppance
arrives in the shape of the French princess and her ladies. There's been a fashion lately of updating the piece in a way that betrays fundamental distrust of it – the nadir
being a recent version that relocated it in a corporate City bank (making nonsense of the vows and just about everything else).
Doran pays it the compliment of presenting it in the Elizabethan period on a mirrored set dominated by a huge tree festooned
with dangling, leaf-coloured glass. Berowne is both the least self-deceived of the lords and the sharpest. Tennant uses his native Scots accent, and there's
a natural healthy scepticism in its lilt that suits the role. The character's comparative non-conformity is also signalled
here by the fact that his pewter-blue costume is in vivid contrast to the prevailing white-and-gold. The production is a banquet of choice comic acting. Ricky Champ brings a touch of Norman Wisdom to that least wise of clowns,
Costard, while Joe Dixon is hilarious as the English-mangling Spanish braggart Don Armado ("Men of piss, well encountered"). Music is also beautifully used. In the scene where each lord, deludedly believing himself to be unobserved, confesses his
love to the audience, the foursome end up harmonising in song. And the production segues with terrific poise from the farce
of the Nine Worthies pageant to the shock of death that lays its chill on the fifth act. It's wonderful to think that, by virtue of his role in the Tardis, Tennant is able to square the circle for the RSC. Without
diluting the expertise and the sense of seasoned experience a jot, he is awakening newcomers to the wonders of Shakespeare
at his most exuberant. Date: 8th October 2008 | Venue: Courtyard
Theatre |
Its best feature is Tennant's sparky Berowne; and he constantly reminds us of the affinities between Hamlet and the king
of Navarre's resident critic. Just as Hamlet sees through the masked pretences of Elsinore, so Berowne instantly spies the
absurdity of the vow made by the youthful king and his companions to study for three years and forswear female society. Staring aghast at the proposals, Tennant uses his Scottish accent to express a pragmatic scepticism. And, when Berowne
himself falls in love with the visiting Rosaline, Tennant frequently hides his embarrassment behind a veil of satiric irony.
Indeed, when Rosaline describes Berowne as "a man replete with mocks", she could almost be describing the prince of Denmark. But Tennant, more than any other actor in this production, shows a capacity to handle Shakespeare's language with sensitivity.
At times he falls too easily into the current Stratford habit of joshing the audience and playing off front-row spectators. But you could hear a pin drop during Berowne's great paean to passion and the power of love over academic study. When Tennant
tells us that "Love's feeling is more soft and sensible than are the tender horns of cockled snails", it is with the breathless
urgency of a man who sees the image he is describing. And when, at the last, Berowne is enjoined by his lover to spend a year
visiting the speechless sick, Tennant displays real shock at the idea one can "move wild laughter in the throat of death".
It is a performance that confirms Tennant's Shakespearean status. I wish I admired the rest of Doran's production as much. But, considering that Shakespeare's play rejoices in the very
verbal virtuosity it is satirising, the production often seems indifferent to language. It gussies up the play with a plethora
of effects including interpolated rap songs, a dancing bear and even, at the climax, a puppet owl on a bendy pole. As the
comic Spaniard, Don Armado, Joe Dixon is also encouraged to turn the character's verbal infelicities into a string of double
entendres. Undoubtedly the production, played in courtly period costume, looks handsome and there are some good supporting performances.
Oliver Ford Davies turns the pedant Holofernes into a groping, rubicund old dominie and at point bursts with indignation as
he cries: "I smell false Latin." Nina Sosanya plays Rosaline as a sharp-witted, embryonic Beatrice and Mariah Gale invests
the French Princess with an imposing, high-chinned dignity. And nothing can impair the magic of the play's conclusion when
death, in the shape of the message-bearing Marcade, suddenly intrudes on a scene of festive riot. It is one of Shakespeare's great comedies and the audience seemed happy enough. But I don't think it's mere nostalgia that
makes me think back to the elegiac beauty of John Barton's production, which put the language at the centre of the play, whereas
here it often seems to be a problem to be camouflaged, disguised or visually decorated. Date: 8th October 2008 | Venue: Courtyard
Theatre |
Having introduced an unexpected, if welcome, element of comedy into his performance as Hamlet, David
Tennant now reverses the process in his exceptionally hard-working season at Stratford by pointing up the darker, more contemplative,
side to one of Shakespeare's most celebrated comic creations. That his portrayal of the garrulous Berowne in Love's Labour's
Lost is more serious than is usually the case can be instantly inferred from his use of his native Scottish accent. Scottish
means serious — just think of our Chancellor and a Prime Minister who but for a couple of missing 'e's . . . Happily, Scottish also means easy on the ear, as is heard in the lilting beauty of many of the speeches
delivered by Tennant with impeccable judgment, not least over the delightfully pointed facial expressions and gestures that
accompany some of them. The best, most heartfelt, delivery comes in Berowne's famous defence of a love that he and his three
pals have vowed to forswear for three years — until a party of beautiful women turn up at the Court of Navarre and they
swiftly change their minds: "And when Love speaks the voice of all the gods/Make heaven drowsy with the harmony." Love's Labour's Lost is famously Shakespeare's filthiest, if not funniest, comedy, and one not blessed
with much in the way of a plot (Will had no one to pinch it from). Director Gregory Doran strikes an appropriately lubricious
tone early on when the delicious dairymaid Jaquenetta (Riann Steele) is seen rhythmically pumping the plunging rod of her
butter churn to the mounting arousal of her two admirers. You can almost see the steam coming from the ears of the preposterous,
preening Spaniard Armado (a superb Joe Dixon) and the chirpy clown, Costard (Ricky Champ). The plot shortage is partly compensated for by our being given so much to look at. This includes the
huge tree, streams of multi-coloured plastic 'leaves' pendant, that dominates designer Francis O'Connor's set, many gorgeous
period costumes — especially those worn by the visiting Princess of France (Mariah Gale) and her retinue of lovely attendants
— and vigorous displays of stick dancing. To beguile the ear, meanwhile, is Paul Englishby's plangent music and — most important of all
— the great torrents of words that pour in unimaginable richness from so many of the characters. Occasionally, one feels
at one with Constable Dull (Ewen Cummins), puffing contentedly on his pipe as these fireworks explode around him. "Thou hast
spoken no word all this while," says the pedant schoolmaster Holofernes (Oliver Ford Davies), to which the officer replies:
"Nor understood none neither, sir." Date: 8th October 2008 | Venue: Courtyard Theatre
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We already have one answer to the David Tennant conundrum. Yes, a time lord with eyes like big, bulging marbles can not
only cope with Hamlet the perplexing play, but convince you that he’s emerged from the Tardis as Hamlet the noble Danish
prince. However, the role he takes in Love’s Labour’s Lost presents a totally different challenge. At least until
an ending that warns of deeper, darker work to come, the comedy shimmers, sparkles, frolics like a spring lamb — and
demands that Tennant’s Berowne radiates unstoppable wit and humour. Tennant comes close to doing that, too. As the brightest of the four lordlings persuaded by the King of Navarre to vow
to renounce women for books, he doesn’t exactly sparkle or frolic. Nor is his Scots-accented Berowne quite the madcap joker, the “man replete with mocks” whose prime appeal is
to “shallow laughing fools”: which is how he’s described by Nina Sosanya’s enchanting young Rosaline,
whom he hopes to marry. But he’s quick-witted, wry, waggish and mischievous enough to exchange a wink with a woman in
the audience when the text asks him to compare her sex with unreliable timepieces. The plot is sweet and light, as fits what was probably Shakespeare’s first romantic comedy. The four votaries’
promise of chastity is tested when Mariah Gale’s Princess of France arrives with three attendant ladies, each of whom
turns out to have a soft spot for her male counterpart. Love games ensue, including the episode in which the men amusingly,
if preposterously, pass themselves off as heavily bearded Muscovites. But the funniest scene in Gregory Doran’s production
is the one that proved that the young Shakespeare was already a comic maestro. Each gallant successively discovers the love
poem another has penned, ending with Tennant’s Berowne, who has been solemnly reproaching the King for breaking his
oath, ripping and eating the evidence of his own treachery. There are nice supporting performances. Joe Dixon is Don Armado, the parody Spaniard grandee who combines fake stateliness
with a verbal delivery that gives ordinary English syllables embarrassing double meanings. And Oliver Ford Davies, playing
the schoolmaster Holofernes, is every inch the earnest pedant, in love with long, Latinate words, but almost as besotted with
the ladies, whose bottoms he’s apt to fondle and whose bosoms he ogles as he sonorously quotes Ovid on “odiferous
flowers”. Courtly love and/or good-natured lust are everywhere in a revival that, thanks to Katrina Lindsay’s
gold-and-white Elizabethan costumes, always looks gorgeous. As for Tennant, he might be a more amused version of the early Benedick in Much Ado when Sosanya’s Rosaline directs
insults at him, and a more romantic version of the late Benedick when he delivers a genuinely heartfelt apologia for marriage.
The most serious moment comes at the close, when a black-clad messenger arrives to break up what’s now almost a playground
rumpus with news of the French king’s death. The fun is over. Everyone remembers that marriage is “a world-without-end bargain”. And Tennant’s Berowne is ordered to
spend a probationary year bringing his trademark good humour to hospitals for the terminally ill. It’s a test that,
like others in this enjoyable production, he’ll surely pass. Date: 8th October 2008 | Venue: Courtyard
Theatre |
AFTER the success of David Tennant’s Hamlet, audiences now have the chance to see the Dr Who star in another guise
in this Shakespeare comedy about love and broken promises. This time Tennant takes on the sardonic Berowne, one of a group of four friends who agree to have no contact with women
for three years – until they all fall in love. The part is ideal for Tennant. His dry humour offers a commentary throughout. This production in The Courtyard Theatre sees Tennant offered more than ample support by a repertory company who also joined
him in Hamlet. All of his fellow conspirators, played by Edward Bennett, Tom Davey and Sam Alexander, are foolish but so human
while Birmingham’s Joe Dixon is excellent as the lovesick Spanish fop Armado. The RSC production is simple but stylish, with plenty of jokes levelled well below the waist and double entendres landing
fast and furious. All in all this show is just good plain fun with Tennant proving that his sell-out run at Stratford-upon-Avon
has been justified. Until November 15. Date: 8th October 2008 | Venue: Courtyard
Theatre |
Date: 8th October 2008 | Venue: Courtyard
Theatre |
Doctor Who star David Tennant has been praised for his performance in a new production of Shakespeare's Love's
Labour's Lost in Stratford-upon-Avon.
According to Daily Express critic Neil Norman, the Scottish actor "is at home on the stage in a great RSC company as he
is at the controls of the Tardis".
The Guardian's Michael Billington said his comedic role as Berowne "confirms Tennant's Shakespearean status."
The production continues in tandem with Tennant's sold-out staging of Hamlet.
Both productions play in repertoire at the Royal Shakespeare's Company's Courtyard Theatre until 15 November.
Hamlet, in which Tennant plays the title role, will transfer in the following month to London's Novello Theatre. In Love's Labour's Lost, Tennant - using his native Scottish accent - plays one of four lords who live to regret taking
a vow of sexual abstinence.
The production, directed by Gregory Doran, shares a number of actors with Hamlet, among them Oliver Ford-Davies and Mariah
Gale.
According to BBC arts correspondent Razia Iqbal, Tennant began rehearsals for Love's Labour's Lost "almost immediately"
after Hamlet opened in August.
"The RSC may have another hit on their hands, which is surprising given the play is Shakespeare's most forgettable early
comedy," she said. |
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Tennant celebrating 11 years online in 2014.
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