Love’s Labour’s Lost (more or less) at Shakespeare North Playhouse – review

If you’re looking for something remotely resembling Shakespeare, forget it. Recalibrate your expectations, set your sights at jokey rhymes rather than iambic pentameter, and prepare for a night of broad silliness in place of Bardic wit.

Two years ago, Shakespeare North Playhouse and the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough teamed up for a cross-Pennine comic re-run of the Wars of the Roses in the shape of a knockabout (rough) adaptation of The Comedy of Errors. Now they’re attempting the same trick with Love’s Labour’s Lost.

Where the first effort had a bit of fun updating and tinkering with Shakespeare’s text – hence the parentheses after the title – this one essentially does away with the Bard altogether and starts all over again. More or less.

There are traces of Will in co-adaptors Elizabeth Godber and Nick Lane’s script, which relocates the original tale of the King of Navarre and his three chums to the party island of Ibiza at the height of its rave reputation in the 1990s. Cue an excuse for the insertion of multiple hits from the period, including some Britney Spears, Aerosmith and Backstreet Boys.

But the mutation to a modern-ish setting is even more liberal than last time out, and characters are freely combined, condensed or simply dumped to suit the needs of the eight-strong cast, making the word “less” carry much more weight than anything else in the title.

If you’re happy to discard all that Elizabethan stuff in favour of an Inbetweeners-style romp about a stag party rudely interrupted by the unexpected arrival of the hen and her mates, then there’s plenty to entertain. From a Blind Date episode to a trio of male Cher impersonators – and even a caricature Spanish policeman of dubious offensiveness – the sitcom line-up is completed.

It’s all delivered very capably by the hard-working cast, who double roles left, right and centre while helping the audience keep track with a multitude of accents. Alice Imelda probably enjoys the best showcase, singing and dancing as, variously, a bridesmaid, a Spanish fitness instructor and an East End hitman, but everyone gets their chance to shine as the show runs to almost three hours.

Paul Robinson’s direction makes the most of his cast’s talents and he keeps them constantly on their toes, with everyone fully committed to Stephanie Dattani’s period choreography and some ridiculously-pitched backing tracks – oh, for a live band – and they wring every possible laugh out of the versified script. Jess Curtis’s swimming pool-inspired set and Jane Lalljee’s authentically humid lighting add atmosphere to the energy, and there’s no denying that much of the audience has a ball with the topical references and casual irreverence.

But it never quite reaches the cleverness and originality of its predecessor and could probably stand half an hour’s worth of cuts to sharpen it up, particularly in the first half. And in case you’re still in any doubt: Shakespeare it definitely ain’t…