A ‘Lost’ Opportunity
Wednesday, August 13th by scott malia
A recent item about the Stratford Shakespeare Festival focused on several musicals it will be producing. Several of these plays are based on plays by classic authors (including, naturally, Shakespeare). What this item made me think of was the fusion of Shakespeare and the musical. While there have been myriad adaptations that re-set the action and update the language, there have been very few successful attempts at making a musical with Shakespeare’s language intact. If Shakespeare buffs and scholars are forever going on and on about the poetic and musical quality of the language, why haven’t more productions taken advantage of it? The fact that many Shakespeare plays include music only further emphasizes the curiousness of this discrepancy.
The most notable attempt was Kenneth Branagh’s Love’s Labours Lost, a 2000 film that set the play in the 1930’s and added songs from the period. It is an absolutely wonderful idea that somehow went horribly, horribly wrong (resulting in a critical trouncing and a box-office nosedive). Since I wholeheartedly believe in the concept, pinpointing the key to its failure is tricky. Certainly, casting actors with limited singing and dancing ability is problematic, though think of how many movie stars have charmed their way through musicals with virtually no musical training. In addition, the old-school use of wide shots with long takes (meant to mirror musicals of the past) is particularly unforgiving for the novices in the cast. Finally, there’s the “Hey-let’s-put-on-a-show!” energy that carries the cast to garish extremes. Perhaps the lesson of Love’s Labours Lost’s failure to create a truly Shakespearean musical is not its lack of effort, but rather how much the weight of that effort is felt in every frame.
