Love’s Labours

Synopsis: Sound recording. A musical adaptation by Clive Swift, Richard Cottrell, Corin Redgrave and John Fortune of Love’s Labour’s Lost performed as part of the University of Cambridge May Week celebrations in 1959 at the ADC Theatre, Cambridge. Ian McKellen is Holofernes.
Language: English
Country: Great Britain
Medium: Audio
Year of release: 2008
Recording date: May 1959

Theatre: ADC Theatre, Cambridge
Theatre company: Cambridge University Amateur Dramatic Club
Production type: Operas and Musicals
Historical period: Edwardian
Plays: Love’s Labour’s Lost
Subjects: Drama
Keywords: Shakespeare, William (1564-1616); Amateur theatre; Student productions

Notes: John Fortune is billed as John Wood - Equity later requested that he change his name to Fortune.
General: `May Week in Cambridge celebrates the end of the examinations. There are May Balls in selected colleges and the ADC members let their hair down with a jollity like this musical from Shakespeare’s "Love’s Labours Lost". It was an ingenious adaptation, set around 1900. Berowne and his student friends each had a witty love scene and song in appropriate pastiche Wilde, Zola, Chekhov and Ibsen. Mike Burrell as the vicar Nathaniel and I as the pedant Holofernes, reprised our rickety double-act from Henry 4th part two and brought the house down with the lyrics based on Shakespeare’s longest word’.(www.mckellen.com - accessed 2/2009).
History: The production also played at the Lyric Opera House, Hammersmith 1 May - 5 July 1959 where McKellen was paid £12 a week, his first paid job as an actor.
Reviews: "Some neat songs, and Ian McKellen showed signs of promise." Harold Hobson, Sunday Times (5 July 1959).

Shakespeare, "Love’s Labours". https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/shakespeare/search/index.php/title/av71947 (Accessed 19 Sep 2024)

Corin Redgrave	Ferdinand, King of Navarre
Derek Jacobi	Berowne
Catherine Buckley	Rose (Rosaline)
Richard Cottrell	Adrian Armado (Don Adriano de Armado)
Antonio Clapham	Jill
Elizabeth Proud	Ada Moth
Freda Stratton	Judy
Ian McKellen	Holofernes
John Fortune	Ffulke
Julian Curry	Anthony Dull
Julienne Ilett	Jaquenetta
Mary Conroy	Jenny
Michael Burrell	Nathaniel
Philip Strick	Costard
Roger Hammond	Charles
Simon Relph	Monsieur Marcade
Terrence Hardiman	Reginald D’Oyley Boyet (Boyet)

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