That Shakespeare in Love takes place in the world of Elizabethan theater would seem to make a theatrical adaptation that much more apt.
But when a film wins seven Oscars — including Best Picture, Best Actress and Best Screenplay — how good does the play have to be not to suffer by comparison? The answer is impossibly good. So, although adapter Lee Hall both stays faithful to his source while tastefully tailoring and embroidering the material, even in the capable hands of South Coast Repertory, Shakespeare in Love the play makes you remember the film, not forget it.
It’s 1593, and 29-year-old Will Shakespeare (Paul David Story) is far from the legend we know he will become. Although his The Two Gentlemen of Verona is known to Queen Elizabeth (Elyse Mitro), his pal Christopher “Kit” Marlowe (Corey Brill) is big man on campus in London theater. Right now Will can’t even get a sonnet out without Kit’s help, and so it’s a mystery how he’s ever going to come up with Romeo & Ethel, the Pirate’s Daughter, never mind how he’s going to navigate his having promised it to two separate theater companies.
Ah, but there’s nothing like love for inspiration. Viola de Lesseps (Amelia White) so loves Will’s writing that, despite the Elizabethan prohibition against women appearing on the stage, she gets herself cast as the male lead in Romeo & Ethel. At the same time, in her woman’s weeds she inspires Will to begin producing the work that will transform him into “the Bard.”
Much of Shakespeare in Love’s effect comes from our being able to see into its future. We know that Romeo & Ethel will be Romeo & Juliet. We know there will be claims that Marlowe authored some of Shakespeare’s plays. We know Will will become Queen Elizabeth’s favorite playwright. We recognize that certain conversational exchanges (e.g., “Tomorrow,” “And tomorrow?”) will pop up in Shakespeare’s later work. This is one of the cleverer aspects of Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard’s screenplay, and Hall leaves all of this intact.
In some sense, though, this is also a relatively easy conceit once you’ve come up with the idea. What puts Shakespeare in Love on a higher plane is that it’s simply funny. Hall keeps most of his intact, too, the play is slightly more slapstick than the film. Not really different in tone, just a bit less sophisticated (not that the screenplay rises to the level of sophistication of Stoppard’s best plays, which is some of the smartest in the history of theater).
For the most part, director Marc Masterson and his cast do justice to all of it, but something doesn’t quite click with his leads. Too often both Story and White don’t fully inhabit the emotional moment. Perhaps I am unfairly judging them against the pitch-perfect work that Joseph Finnes and Gwyneth Paltrow did onscreen. Then again, Mitro’s Queen Elizabeth stands up well enough to Judy Dench’s. It’s a less nuanced role than Will or Viola, but Mitro steals every scene she’s in. She also got the biggest ovation of the night when she regally dealt with some idiot in the audience who left his cell phone on after intermission.
Masterson really shows his stuff with the ensemble scenes, some of which employ a dizzying number of moving parts doing their thing on a beautiful wooden set (kudos, Ralph Funicello and company) with two tiers and numerous nooks. Jaymi Lee Smith’s lighting design is effective in its elegant simplicity, and Susan Tsu’s costumes — especially Queen Elizabeth’s, which is probably even better than what Dench sports as part of yet another Oscar win — are marvelous.
The film Shakespeare in Love came out in 1998, so even if you’ve seen it, it may be long enough ago that you retain only the broad strokes. Although you may not like what that says about your memory, it’s ideal for enjoying South Coast Repertory’s production. You can rent the film later, but right now there probably isn’t anything going in the world of theater with such universal appeal.
Shakespeare in Love is playing at 7the the South 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays, at 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and at 2:30 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays, through Feb. 10 at South Coast Repertory’s Segerstrom Stage, 655 Town Center Drive in Costa Mesa.
Cost: $10 to $88
Details: (714) 708-5555; https://scr.org