2010. GB. DVD and Blu-ray (region free). 167 minutes. Opus Arte. Price: £19.99 (DVD), £24.99 (Blu-ray).
About the Author: Eve-Marie Oesterlen is the EU Screen Project Content Delivery Co-Ordinator at the BUFVC. Her publications include (as editor, with Olwen Terris and Luke McKernan), Shakespeare on Film, Television and Radio: The Researcher's Guide (2009).
Email: ask@learningonscreen.ac.uk
Tel: 020-3743-2389
Opus Arte’s William Shakespeare’s Love's Labour's Lost is the most recent of three Shakespeare Globe productions from the 2009 theatre season to be immortalised in High Definition recording and made available to a wide audience through the lucrative DVD and Blu-ray market.
The Shakespeare Globe is the first theatre organisation to form a partnership with the multi-platform arts production and distribution company owned by the Royal Opera House, which has already made a name for itself for presenting 'the world's finest' arts titles using the latest in digital technology. As such, the Globe sees itself as being in the vanguard of a new vogue for live theatre recordings that started with the NT Live initiative of the National Theatre and Digital Theatre productions company in 2009. For Dominic Dromgoole, the artistic director of the Globe, such cross-media ventures form an essential part of the Globe's mission to globalise the 'classic' Shakespeare experience in a digital age:
The relationship between live performance, new recording technology, and new modes of distribution, is going to the big story for theatre, dance and opera over the next few years.
Leaving aside the undeniable educational benefits of having affordable, high quality 'original practice' Shakespeare productions available at the click of a button (on purchase of a DVD or Blu-ray a digital copy can be downloaded to your PC), what makes these recordings particularly useful is arguably also what makes them tricky to watch: multiple camera angles in quick succession present various possible views of the action both on the stage and off. On the one hand, this offers a unique insight into what makes theatre come alive - the presence of an audience, on the other hand, invariably presents the viewer with competing pulls for attention that makes it difficult to follow the play.
What the viewer will not get, in other words, is the contained clarity and subtlety of action and acting that characterises filmed stage productions such as the recent Rupert Goold's Macbeth (2010) and RSC's Hamlet with David Tennant from 2009, produced by the arts production company Illuminations and broadcast on public service broadcasting stations PBS in the US and the BBC in the UK.
Instead, the Opus Arte productions capitalise on the possibilities offered by digital technology to convey a dynamic and authentic impression of the Globe experience (minus the distractions created by the inevitable aircraft noise and the discomfort of actually having to stand in the open-air pit for three hours), in the process memorialising some great performative triumphs in the venue for which Shakespeare's plays were originally written.
In this respect, then, love's labour is certainly won: each of the Globe recordings preserve a sense of Shakespearean drama as a vibrant theatre event, with the film directing giving a bountiful appreciation of all the ingredients that make it such: wide shots give an impression of the possibilities of the space, the ensemble work of the cast playing to its audience; while close-ups bring home gestural expression or zoom in on the delicate detail of period costumes and props. ‘Shakespeare’s English’ reverberates in true surround sound quality. The DVD Chapters are helpfully broken down into in Acts and Scenes and Extras include a Cast Gallery and a list of ‘famous speeches’. To boot, all this comes packaged together with a handy little booklet about the play, with notes and synopsis in English, French and German (although DVD subtitles are in English only).
If this has whetted your appetite for more, Opus Arte has recently released a limited edition Shakespeare's Globe Set, which contains all the three recorded productions from the 2009 Young Hearts theatre season: As You Like It (dir. Thea Sharrock), Romeo and Juliet (dir. Dominic Dromgoole) and Love’s Labour’s Lost too.
For a lively and thoughtful debate on the relationships between stage and screen, see ‘Debate: Should Theatre Be On Television?’ online at: www.theartsdesk.com/
Eve-Marie Oesterlen EU Screen Project Content Delivery Co-Ordinator