Anybody who thinks that you can perform Love's Labour's Lost without doing something serious to the script probably hasn't read the play. Though it still has great moments and some good jokes, huge amounts of it just don't make sense without an extensive background in Elizabethan scholarly humour.Which is why I'm uncharacteristically pleased with Year Out Drama Company's decision to abandon a lot of the original script in favour of something more contemporary and comprehensible.Their plain-clothes and low-tech simplicity emphasise the timeless comedy of the play - young people in love still do silly things and comedy Spaniards are as funny as ever. The company have worked in a good selection of new jokes as well, including a remarkably sophisticated through-line about tents; their able manipulations of plot and text are well-thought-out in a way that a lot of Shakespeare tweaking isn't.The cast render their parts with a comfort appropriate to their carefree new script - Don Armado, Moth and Costard work their broad comedy very ably, and the nobles perform well as a unit. One slight issue with taking out a lot of Shakespeare's text, however, is that it renders Berowne a bit limpid - the character no longer has the dry wit of the original. However, some loss of complexity is inevitable in an hour-long compression of a longer work, and it's far from fatal.A slightly larger issue is that, while the company broadly has a very good grasp on the play, at the end Shakespeare makes a U-turn too sharp for them to keep up with. Mercadé's entrance, which flips the whole play from jollity to sobriety, was oddly understated and lost a lot of the ending's impact, but ultimately doesn't detract from what remains a very competent, and above all, fun rendition of a difficult text.
