Warm nights have finally arrived in St. Louis, which to a certain (nerdy and large) sector of the population can only mean one thing: It’s time for Shakespeare. On Thursday, Shakespeare Festival St. Louis kicks off another year of Shakespeare in the Park.
If you’re keeping score at home, you know that after last year’s production of the tragic Romeo and Juliet, we’re due for a comedy. And it’s a great one: Love’s Labour’s Lost, a slightly askew take on the usual comedy recipe of boy meets girl, madcap adventures ensue, and a wedding wraps the whole thing.
Stay up-to-date with the local arts scene
Subscribe to the weekly St. Louis Arts+Culture newsletter to discover must-attend art exhibits, performances, festivals, and more.
The short version: The King of Navarre and his three bros swear off women for three years to focus on studying. Enter the Princess of France and her retinue, on a diplomatic mission to the King. The women have to stay a mile outside court because of the fellas’ ban, but the men visit their camp and couples fall in love. Subplots and mistaken identities abound. At the end of the play, the Princess is urgently called away and the women tell the men they’ll be back in a year to see if their love is actually true.
Tom Ridgely came into his role as executive producer of Shakespeare Festival St. Louis last year, and for the first time, he’s bringing his considerable directing chops to our Shakespearean summer nights.
“As a director, there’s a difference directing outdoors and on a stage as big as one of these,” he says of Shakespeare Glen in Forest Park. “It’s fun because you get a different palette to play with. We’ve got all these live trees and a goat—all these things you wouldn’t be able to do if it wasn’t outdoors.”
Conveying nuance and emotion to a huge number of people in a natural amphitheater brings specific challenges. When weather is good, it might be necessary to communicate a subtle shift to 5,000 people. There are different ways of vocally projecting or indicating who is doing what—the person speaking, for instance, will usually be in motion.
“There’s a different set of tools and techniques that help you be clear and tell the story,” Ridgely explains.
Both the literal setting and the historical moment in which we’re living make Love’s Labour’s Lost the perfect play for this summer.
“This is the only play that Shakespeare wrote that’s entirely set in a park,” he says. “It fits the situation in the Glen perfectly. It all takes place in the middle of the summer, too, so it’s a perfect fit.”
Also, says Ridgely, in this era of #MeToo and the reckoning it’s unleashed, it’s fitting to produce what he describes as Shakespeare’s most feminist play. The women arrive on the scene for reasons of statecraft, not romance. (Although romance does ensue—it’s a comedy, after all.) And after all the romantic high jinks, the women leave—they don’t lie around swooning and pining.
“One of them has a country to run,” says Ridgely. “She doesn’t have time to make a relationship a priority.”
As always, the Bard’s centuries-old works are relevant to our lives today. In Love’s Labour’s Lost, Shakespeare is examining how men and women treat each other, and what young men are taught about romance—and how that stacks up to reality.
“It’s very much a play for 2019 in a lot of ways,” Ridgely says.
It’s also just good fun.
“Shakespeare took the regular rom-com genre and tripled it,” says Ridgely. A clown is usually on hand to make wise observations under the guise of being a fool—Love’s Labour’s Lost has seven to keep track of.
Pack your picnic and head for the Glen. The show runs May 29 to June 23, at 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays. Sit with the groundlings for free, or shell out a few pennies ($10–$40) for reserved seating with the lords and ladies.
