Director Nick Bagnall and composer James Fortune take Shakespeare’s early satirical romance (some say, his very first play) out of time and relocate it in 1966 (love letters transform to 45rpm vinyl discs). They bend it into a music-led event with eight actors playing 12 roles (13 if we count musician Fred Thomas doubling as a hound dog) and also a variety of instruments in an onstage band (drums, guitars, sax, keyboard etc).
The plot explores a range of loves – not all of them groovy. Valentine loves Sylvia. Proteus loves Julia until he meets Sylvia, decides he can’t live without her love and, unable to control himself, attempts to rape her. This violent act is the final test of the love between the two male friends. Their friendship survives strengthened, but at a cost to the two women, this production suggests. Romantic love is no substitute for this male bonding. Tied to the men, in a patriarchal world they cannot get away from, Julia and Sylvia face a future of sorrow with, as they wail in the concluding duet, “loneliness wandering round my door”. For these two women, youth’s carnival is definitely over. The play’s strongest instance of true love is that of Proteus’s servant for his dog: Launce stands loyally by Crab, shouldering blame for his beast’s wild thing behaviours (Charlotte Mills’s Launce is a bright presence).
Sadly, Bagnall’s yoking of the 60s to Shakespeare turns out to be as mismatched as the couples at the end. His production is not thoughtful, playful or witty enough to resolve plentiful incongruities between 1960s and 1590s; the play is lost somewhere between the two. The acting is weak: mannerisms replace characterisations, while words are gabbled, shouted and lost. Music and dances disturb the rhythm of the action without providing compensatory good vibrations. If this were a 1960s record, it would be a Juke Box Jury “Miss”.
