Love's Labour's Lost - why talent knows no age!

Love's Labour's Lost
Camp Shakespeare - Washington, DC
July 10th, 2012

Brad - A
Chelsea - A

Ok, so we should start by saying this is a super sad comedy and I had a swollen face so the play and my well being day of are not why I gave this an A, it is solely based on how awesome a bunch of high schoolers pulled off a Shakespeare play so I hope that says something, clearly I do not give A's willy nilly!

But, about the play: This is a comedy set in the Kingdom of Navarre. The king and his 3 bros decide they are going to devote themselves to 3 years of study and not allow any women to distract them. So they sign a law saying they cannot be in the company of women for 3 years, very he-man-woman-haters-club-esque. Right after they sign this lo and behold a princess and her 3 gals come to visit the kingdom! The king makes them stay in a tent outside of the kingdom walls. Clearly they all met, pair up and fall instantly in love! There is also a side plot about a Spanish swordsman who is trying to woo on of the ladies in town which is super funny. All of this culminates with the Spanish man, the king, and his noblemen putting on a play for the ladies, dressing up like Germans to spy on them and dancing. All quite strange and funny. BUT! The end takes a super sad twist. Spoiler alert - at the end the princess hears that he father has died and she must immediately return home with her ladies. All of the men vow to wait for them and the woman say that to test their love they must wait a year and day before coming for them. So, the ladies take off and the men wait heartbroken - hence Love's Labour's Lost. Sad ending!!

The seeing of this play was a bit eventful. The day before I had a dentist appointment. The regular good old fashion cleaning kind but I had some sort of allergic reaction to the fluoride and my whole mouth swelled up for 3 days. It was awful and I felt like a chipmunk but it did make my lips very lovely!

Brad called the next day and said "hey wanna see high schoolers attempt Shakespeare?" I did not, but by golly I will finish this project! So, we went. It was actually super wonderful! The actors were great! Clearly, we saw some high quality, as you can see this was the ADVANCED class!

They were great! I think one of the defining characteristics we have seen between good and bad Shakespeare has been the actors knowing what they are saying. If they get what the words mean they usually say it like one human being would talk to another. If not, they get all arm flinging, britishy, and stale. These actors knew what they were saying and they committed to their roles. Our favorite was the Spanish swordsman, he had a drawn on mustache  and open shirt to reveal...no chest hair but he owned it! He was hilarious and not overboard. For the fact that we have seen an insane amount Shakespeare done by people who are paid to do this for a living and people with way more experience this play held it's own among them.

I was really impressed. I even braved my face embarrassment to tell the director how great it was. I pretty sure he thought I had had a stroke recently.

Chelsea