The original Love’s Labours Won regarded by many as one of Shakespeare’s lost plays, was purportedly written before 1598 and published in 1603. Some others say it may have been an alternative title for an existing play – most likely Much Ado About Nothing. However, the version presented by Avant Theatre Company at the Market Place Theatre, Cowbridge was the award-winning, and a little more recent, script written by Ryan JW Clark.
The theatre is a very unassuming barn (of sorts), behind another barn, a fair bit off the main road going through Cowbridge. You would be forgiven for not being able to find it at first. Walking in you will find the décor needs a little updating and that the staff treats you as you have been a regular visitor for years. Just like any Valleys rugby club really. And this was the setting of the events that were to unfold. Looking to the stage as you take your seat you will see a basic set; some chairs, 2 tables; a high counter representing a bar with a couple of bottles of the “house red” and some plastic pints glasses to pour it into – suitably classy.
The play follows two ‘rugby lads’, Caesus and Valentine, and their girlfriends, Julia and Katherine, when they are visited by a family troupe of actors, Edgar, Edmund and their sister Annabelle. Caesus (Yannick Budd) is the first to fall foul to Annabelle’s (Bethan Robert) charms and beauty. To complicate matters further Valentine follows suit and falls head over heels, all this much to the scorn of Julia (Rachel Pedley-Miller) and Katherine (Emma-Jayne Morgan). It is left for the theatre troupe to show the men the error of their ways led by the comedy duo of Edgar (Mathew Bool) and Edmund (Douglas Gray).
The production’s poster states that the play is written in ‘Shakespearean’ style. This is an increasingly loaded and sometimes ambiguous term among academics of performance of Shakespearean text and the plays of his contemporaries (Elizabethan and Jacobean). Basically, the argument is that Shakespeare does not own verse, or the iambic pentameter for that matter, and he should not be credited every time they’re used. Certainly, in this case Clark has written a fine and witty script, albeit referencing Shakespeare with the title. Ultimately he doesn’t need Shakespeare here.
It may also be a mistake or naïve to suggest that Clark’s script is as quite as good as a Shakespeare play – as I say it is very good but it isn’t Shakespeare: it just not that profound (at one point it attempts to say theatre reflects life but the metaphor is weak). At times it gets closer to some of Shakespeare’s more watery efforts, As You Like It, for example, however, it never packs the punch that his great romances or tragedies do.
The performance opened very well and it becomes quite clear early on that the cast can deal very well with the verse script. Certainly, the dialogue flowed better than the monologues which are at times stagnated and jittery. In other words, there appeared to be a disconnect between the rhythm of the script and the physicality of the actors when they were giving a soliloquy. While there was nothing outstanding in the performances the cast worked well off each other, and there were some excellent comic moments, particularly from Edgar (Mathew Bool) and Edmund (Douglas Gray).
Director Katie Harris and her team have provided a very entertaining evening, perhaps not something that will turn you from a 21st century realist into a 16th century romantic, but it might give cause to smile and even laugh out load on occasion.