Shakespearean “Puppet Play with People” Goes All-In on Silly

Typically, the Garage Theatre fills its year-end spot with lite fare. For several seasons this was an original multipart melodrama (boo-/hissing encouraged, cloth tomatoes provided for pelting the bad guy), whose final installment came in 2015. Love’s Labour’s Lost: A Puppet Play with People is best understood in that tradition. Yeah, it’s sorta Shakespeare — despite the preponderance of original text, the program’s “adapted from” gets it right — but silly fun with actors is more the name of the game.

The threadbare plot of Love’s Labour’s Lost — threadbare even in its original form — concerns the King of Navarre and three pretentious pals who make a pact to lead an ascetic life of study for three years, shutting themselves off from women and whatnot. But uh-oh, the Princess of France and retinue are due at court any time now on a diplomatic mission. What to do, especially considering that these four young hombres have already got the hots for these dames? 

Aside from a subplot (really, half a subplot) involving “a fantastical Spaniard” who’s thrice as pretentious as the King and co., that’s literally all there is to it. N’er did the Bard pen a play whose raison d’être was more about simple, silly fun.

Still, purists (or at least Shakespeare snobs) may be well advised to stay away from Love’s Labour’s Lost: A Puppet Play with People. Besides cutting liberally (including decimating that half-a-subplot), adding whole new layers of silly onto a silly foundation may cause some to feel that Love’s Labour’s Lost’s one-note humor is overemphasized.

The best audience for LLL: A PPwP are those who go to the theatre wanting above all to get off on the actors’ positive energy (perhaps the same people who love improv shows). On that score, the Garage peeps succeed as usual. It’s easy to admire how much work the cast put into getting their mouths around Shakespeare’s dialog (it ain’t easy, folks), only to subjugate it to the immediacy of being in the room with the audience. Standouts are L Castro as the (puppet) Princess [although can it be long before a certain sector of society cries foul at a caricatured French accent?] and Elli Luke as (puppet) fantastical Spaniard. By choosing to leave the puppeteers fully exposed, directors Rob Young & Matthew Vincent Julian allow us to enjoy these performances far more than we would otherwise.

Because the success of LLL: A PPwP depends more on energy than on its source text, many of opening night’s best moments were improvised. I expect the cast to draw from this well in greater amounts as the run progresses. What’s less clear is whether the Garage will find a more effective way to close the show. By cutting the play-within-a-play and epilogue, Young & Julian have deleted Shakespeare’s proper ending without adding anything to fill the void. As it is, even an audience as appreciative and dialed-in as opening night’s won’t know the play is over until the actors make their curtain call. 

You say you’ve had a hard year? “This show’s mission,” say Young & Julian in the program, “is to share in a collective laugh as a community, find some joy, and be here together. Allow your inner child to laugh and breathe. Be free and wild for a while.” Knowing and caring about Shakespeare is not requisite here, though you’ll still get a healthy dose. And unlike anything else the Garage did in 2022, this one is suitable for actual kids. Maybe this is a good way to turn them on to the world’s most renowned author before arid teachers and awful “serious” productions get a chance to poison the well?

Love’s Labour’s Lost: A Puppet Play with People
Times: 8 p.m., Thursday to Saturday through Dec. 19
Cost: $18 to $25 (Thursdays 2-for-1); closing night afterparty: $30
Details: thegaragetheatre.org
Venue: The Garage Theatre, 251 E. 7th St., Long Beach