Syncopated Shakespeare

By JOHN FLEMING

© St. Petersburg Times, published April 5, 2001

A screwball romantic comedy remains just that, no matter the century. That's the theory behind Love's Labour's Lost, 1930s-style. And music -- well, it has always been the food of love.

There's pressure on this year's Shakespeare in the Park production, because it's coming after American Stage's first full-blown flop in a genre it has cultivated -- generally with success -- for 16 years.

Critics piled on last year's Twelfth Night Fever, and attendance dropped off. What's more, sponsors in Tampa yanked funding in objection to some raciness in the disco-themed show.

So what does Kenneth Noel Mitchell, artistic director of the company and its resident Shakespearean, want to achieve with this year's show, Love's Labour's Lost?

"I think we do need a hit," said Mitchell, who was reunited with his collaborator from last year, composer Bob McDowell, to put Shakespeare's early romantic comedy to song and dance.

Whether it's a hit or a miss will be known soon. Tonight, supporters of the theater will attend a gala performance. The production opens to the public on Friday.

Rosaline: Love's Labour's Lost Rosaline will be played by a performer who made her Broadway debut in a legendary flop that became a musical cult classic. 'A festival of language' Love's Labour's Lost, probably written around 1595, is not one of Shakespeare's towering masterpieces, but critic Harold Bloom thinks the Bard "may have enjoyed a particular and unique zest in composing it. Love's Labour's Lost is a festival of language, an exuberant fireworks display in which Shakespeare seems to seek the limits of his verbal resources, and discovers that there are none."

Mitchell and McDowell think they've chosen a play that lends itself to music. Love's Labour's Lost is about what happens when the King of Navarre and three of his pals swear off women for a life of the mind. But then the Princess of France, along with three attractive girlfriends, arrives for a visit. Romantic complications ensue.

"The language in the play is very musical," McDowell said. "There's a lot of sonnetlike writing. The play in a lot of ways is about language and about words."

Certainly, the boy-meets-girl formula has served many a musical.

"For me, the play is about the war of the sexes," said Mitchell, whose adaptation retains Shakespeare's setting of Navarre, a Spanish region on the French border. "It has the feel of a screwball comedy. I think the message is don't mess with Cupid. Don't waste time when it comes to love."

To make room for music, Mitchell had to cut Shakespeare, always a daunting task. "It took me five months to cut this baby. It just killed me."

Kenneth Noel Mitchell, who conceived and directed the adaptation of Shakespeare’s romantic comedy, is hoping for a hit after last season’s poorly received Twelfth Night Fever.

He did away entirely with two characters from the original, Nathaniel and Holofernes, whose Elizabethan humor is usually lost on contemporary audiences. He updated the play to the late 1930s, which gave McDowell the opportunity to write a swing score.

"We're looking at a more sophisticated side of things, going toward Gershwin, Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart," McDowell said.

In the previous two park productions -- Twelfth Night Fever and The Winter's Tale -- the score was recorded, and the cast performed in glorified karaoke style. This time around, the company has gone back to live music in the form of two pianists and a percussionist.

Actually, the piano players will be at Casio keyboards, as the electronic instruments are necessary for outdoor, amplified musical theater.

"One of the pianos is inevitably going to be more of a rhythm sustaining piano, kind of the motor underneath things," McDowell said. "Adding the second piano gives me the chance to have more melodic parts in the score as well as the rhythmic part that gives you the syncopation and such that's going to read as swing."

Mitchell and McDowell naturally were affected by the negative response to Twelfth Night Fever.

Composer Bob McDowell’s swing score includes a dozen songs and calls for two keyboards and percussion.

"Absolutely honest? It made us a little cautious," said McDowell, a New York composer and arranger who was working for American Stage for the first time last year.

"I didn't pull any punches. I think that made it difficult for people who found themselves offended or confronted by the thing. I think the lesson is not to censor yourself but be aware of who you're writing for and what they will accept."

Mitchell sees the problem as less a matter of the disco setting, with its suggestions of drugs and sex, than of muddled staging.

"I think the problem was we lost the audience," he said. "That was my fault as director in not making the story clear enough."

Whatever the reason, Twelfth Night Fever represented a setback. Paid attendance of about 15,000 for 28 performances in St. Petersburg was off about 1,500 from the previous year; it was well short of the most popular show, a punk rock Macbeth that drew more than 20,000 in 1997.

Twelfth Night Fever also fell afoul of donors with the Community Foundation of Tampa Bay who pulled $39,000 from the production, forcing the theater to take a steep loss on last year's weeklong run in Tampa. Love's Labour's Lost will not play in Tampa.

Lee Manwaring Lowry, the managing director, hopes to get attendance back up to around 18,000 this year for the $200,000 production. But she downplays the need for a boffo hit.

"Last year did make us have to stop and think," Lowry said. "But I don't think it's just about a hit or not. I really feel like this event is something that's beloved by people."

PREVIEW

American Stage's Shakespeare in the Park production of Love's Labour's Lost opens Friday and runs through May 12 at Demens Landing, First Avenue S and Bayshore, St. Petersburg. Performances are Wednesday through Sunday at 8 p.m. Gates open at 6 p.m. General admission blanket seats are $7 (Wednesday, Thursday, Sunday) and $10 (Friday, Saturday). Reserved chairs are $22. For information and ticket reservations, call (727) 823-7529.

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