Love's Labour's Lost @ Bard in the Botanics

Year in, year out, Bard in the Botanics has to contend with the Glaswegian weather, and the cast of this year’s Love’s Labour’s Lost must be congratulated on their ability not only to act through the pouring rain, but to grip and keep an audience with them. 

A promenade performance, Love’s Labour’s Lost has truly been designed for the Botanical Gardens, and Gordon Barr’s direction displays masterful use of the gardens to capture some of Shakespeare’s most-loved tropes; as the four men foresworn of female company each secretly confess their true loves, while their companions lurk in the bushes, it is a pivotal, hilarious and heartwarming scene. For a play all about mockery, the audience are given the upper hand as they are invited into each location, and into each character’s inner thoughts. 

James Ronan as Berowne and Nicole Cooper’s Rosaline bring the wit, charm and bite that the poetry requires, while Robert Elkin shines as Moth, brought perfectly into modern times. But it is the cast as an ensemble that brings the poetry to life, and no more so than in their assumed ad-libbing and jibes at the pouring rain throughout. They bring an energy that invigorates the language. 

At the play’s dark turn, though perhaps not surprising given the threat of loss that hangs over the action, it is hard not to feel disheartened, and the cast act this feeling with just as much grit as they mock.