Shakespeare in Love

The Bard offers a play about celibacy. Sort of.

By Michael Gallucci on Wed, Sep 27, 2006 at 4:00 am

Cleveland theater

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In Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost, which opens tonight, four pals (including a king) swear off women. Then, a princess and three of her friends come to town, and all bets are off. "It's a tricky piece and very delicate," says Great Lakes Theater Festival artistic director Charles Fee. "But it's also extraordinarily funny. Shakespeare's comedies are the best ever written in our language, and they play today like they were written yesterday. This one is a real blast. It's a real trip."

Fee says the Bard's comedy was chosen as part of Great Lakes' two-play fall repertory not for what it is, but for what it isn't. A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, the other Great Lakes production currently running on the Ohio Theatre stage, is a bawdy musical. Still, he adds, "It's almost impossible to put two plays on a stage and watch them and not feel there are [similar] thematic issues."
Wednesdays-Saturdays, 7:30 p.m.; Sundays, 3 p.m. Starts: Sept. 30. Continues through Oct. 20