If Emily Burns’ immaculately realised Love’s Labour's Lost is anything to go by, there is a fresh new breeze whispering through the corridors of the RSC. This is a delightful production in which no opportunity to explore and amplify the text is wasted; and promises so much for the upcoming season under the new co-artistic directors Daniel Evans and Tamara Harvey.
Immaculately realised
Although perhaps not the most obvious choice with which to herald a bright new dawn, this is a play which resonates more in 2024 than might initially seem to be the case. For whilst much of the arcane badinage has understandably lost its zing in centuries of transit: there is still plenty of silliness to splash around in.
Above all, this is a production which feels loved. There is none of the smugness or sense of ‘dialling it in’ that can hamper elite theatre: alienating new audiences and boring old ones. Perhaps it is significant that almost every cast member is making their RSC debut alongside the director; for there is a heart to this piece often noticeable by its absence when given a more seasoned embrace.
In Navarre, four young chaps eschew worldly pleasures in order to commit to study. Four young women descend into their orbit on a diplomatic mission. And so the games begin. As comedic Shakespearean plotlines go, it is deliciously uncomplicated… leaving space for the audience to grapple instead with the occasional verbosity of a text wrought by a young author just honing his craft.
Every inch of the concept has been explored to chime with the text: from the stark opening of a Press Briefing Room to the gorgeous Pacific Island retreat brought to life in Joanna Scotcher’s beautifully sleek, seven-star spa-hotel set. The geographical location is an inspired touch: suggesting to us, perhaps, some of the beauty and remoteness felt by 16th century audiences when contemplating the politics of Aquitaine and Navarre. It also conjures the elevated social status of its main protagonists: all pressed chinos and impossibly shiny hair larking around on gold courses, whilst the lower echelons run hither and thither, weaving their own romantic entanglements around sun loungers and face packs.
Jack Bardoe as Don Armado is one of the standout performances: a hipster Spanish tennis instructor with vowel sounds nearly as strangulated as his nether regions are in their tight red shorts. This is a broad, brash, and ballsy performance which brings many of the eyes-on-stalks moment, and a fair proportion of the belly laughs. Jordan Metcalfe’s Boyet brings a contrasting subservience: a clenched, uptight, frustrated wit devoted to his Princess and determined to oversee some form of order.
The boys moon and fawn with neatly-drawn differentiations of character; the girls similarly primp and preen. It is Luke Thompson as Berowne who really gets the opportunity to flex his verse speaking muscles: an opportunity he takes full-throated advantage of in a charming, goofy, knowing performance which tantalises the audience with the prospect of how future classic roles might be realised.
Thompson proves to be rather more then just a pretty air of britches with some dazzling delivered verse speaking which is echoed almost across the board. Whilst I might prefer the cast to trust to their own performances, the concept, and the man himself to allow the piece to run free of the modern ad libs which are no doubt inserted to massage accessibility but which ultimately just jar on the ear: one supposes there may be teenagers or more recent converts who appreciate and find greater engagement through the bants.
The ingenuity and imagination knitted throughout the action bowls us towards the final, poignant moments in which the young Princess must close the door on girlish pursuits and walk towards a throne she is barely old enough to ascend. Melanie-Joyce Bermudez’s dignity and poise intimates that the weary acceptance of her station is unlikely to guarantee a reconciliation with Ferdinand (a commanding Abiola Owokoniran) in a year’s time. Perhaps the other lovers will prove more constant: although it seems doubtful. We are left rooting for Berowne and Rosaline (a punchy Ioanna Kimbook): but our hearts are telling us that the girls will be moving on.
Which, it seems, the RSC is doing in style. With a tenderness and devotion which is really rather moving and really rather brilliant.
