Movie review: Love's Labour's Won

A scene from Love's Labour's Won.

The second instalment of a two-parter, this play proposes a solution to the mystery of what happened to the play that matched Love's Labour's Lost by assuming it was (and then delivering) Much Ado About Nothing.

The 1993 version, in which Kenneth Branagh directed and played Benedick to Emma Thompson's Beatrice when the pair were still married, remains the most sparklingly spoken onscreen Shakespeare I've ever seen, though this Royal Shakespeare Company show is a cracker.

Bennett and Terry, who played Berowne and Rosaline in the earlier production, are here the fractious pair who will do anything rather than admit they love each other.

Director Luscombe has set the play in the immediate aftermath of the Great War, in a country house (marvellously designed by Simon Higlett) pressed into service as a convalescent unit. It's an idea that will chime with Downton Abbey viewers and it's in tune with the times, too (Noel Coward and Ivor Novello feature in the live music).

Better, it explains the cliffhanger ending of Lost; the love thwarted in that play is redeemed in this one. But not easily. The story abounds in confusions, ambiguities, misinterpreted bits of eavesdropping and rich moments of dramatic irony.

The play depends utterly for its success on the quality of that central duo and they are beyond brilliant: Bennett perfectly captures Benedick's blowhard style, while Terry perfectly gets the tenderness, even insecurity beneath her shrewishness.

For my money, Haverson's rather obvious dogged constable Dogberry isn't a patch on the one that Nathan Fillion (of TV's Castle fame) gave Joss Whedon in that black-and-white gem of a few years back.

And the famous gulling of Benedick is a trifle overdone here, too. There's a bit too much of the knockabout farce in the whole show, actually, which tends to blur its subtler aspects. As the lights go down on Benedick and Beatrice's final kiss, there's just enough time to see uncertainty, even sadness, in the gesture. That's just as it should be.

Cast: Edward Bennett, Michelle Terry, Nick Haverson, Tunji Kasim, Flora Spencer-Longhurst
Director: Christopher Luscombe
Running time: 180 mins
Rating: E

Verdict: First-rate production only slightly marred by broad touches.

- TimeOut