Love's Labour's Lost (Vol. 88) | Matt Wolf (review date 17 March 2003)

Matt Wolf (review date 17 March 2003)

SOURCE: Wolf, Matt. Review of Love's Labour's Lost. Variety 390, no. 5 (17 March 2003): 43-4.

[In the following review of Trevor Nunn's 2003 Royal National Theater staging of Love's Labour's Lost, Wolf contends that the production was a “partial success,” noting that it came alive only in the second half of the play.]

What a difference an interval—sorry, intermission—makes. There's no other way to sum up one's experience of the lavish and leisurely National Theater production of Love's Labour's Lost, which marks the final production of National a.d. Trevor Nunn after 5 1/2 years at the helm. Closing out his tenure with a staging that takes until its second half to show off Nunn as the leading classicist that he is, Love's Labour's demands a labor of love from an audience to last out the mirth-free first hour or so. Come the break, and it's as if the quicksilver...

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