[In the following review, Kohn applauds Antoni Cimolino's 2003 Stratford Festival of Canada production of Love's Labour's Lost.]

The quickest way to discern the trifling nature of Love's Labour's Lost is to hear its rhythms. Much of it is in rhyme, unlike the preponderance of Shakespeare's plays. In another departure from the Shakespearean norm, some dialogue is in anapestic tetrameter. (In case you missed class that day, think “'Twas the Night Before Christmas.”)

The play's plot, if you can call it such, centers upon four Spanish noblemen who swear to avoid women for three years and to devote themselves to studious pursuits. Enter four French noblewomen. (In case you missed class that day, it doesn't matter.)

Director Antoni Cimolino and company provide a surfeit of style to make up for a shortage of substance, and a good time is had by all.

Shakespeare supplies ample ammunition. At one point the four noblemen disguise themselves as Russians and drop in on the women. Designer Santo Loquasto has garbed the men in outlandish Russian red; they look like rejects from a Cossack dance troupe (and dance like it, too). Later, for no compelling reason, a group of rural folk in funny costumes puts on a play; amateurs all, they botch it laugh-out-loud comically like their counterparts in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Loquasto does less well with an oversized cart laden with gewgaws that sits onstage through most of Act 1, distracting but little-used.

It's enjoyable to observe how many of the tricks and devices Shakespeare would put to better use later are first conjured here. A man writing bad poetry to his lady love and publicly posting it recurs in As You Like It. A constable named Dull misuses words to humorous effect in Love's Labour's Lost; a constable named Dogberry misuses words to greater comic effect in Much Ado About Nothing.

Audiences don't need that knowledge to appreciate this production, which features several stellar performances. Graham Abbey is debonair as nobleman Berowne. Brian Bedford devises a new and indeterminate accent as Don Adriano de Armado, a self-important, slightly bewildered fellow who imagines himself a great lover and a master wordsmith. And Jonathan Goad as Costard, a rube with aplomb, has a showstealing moment as he skeptically analyzes the word “remuneration” and finds it wanting.

Playgoers who invest their time in Love's Labour's Lost will find their attention remunerated amply.