Love Is In The Air at The Space

Release date: 16/02/2010

The spirit of St Valentine’s Day continued for an extra few days with affaires de coeur still abounding at The Space at Dundee College, when HND acting and performance students presented Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost.

A total of 16 students tackled this rarely-performed comedy full of puns and cross-purposes, exploring the power of love over reason.

The King of Navarre and his courtiers have vowed to concentrate on their studies for three years, avoiding the distraction of women or frivolities, to sleep only three hours each night and to fast at least once a week.

A tall order for anyone, as Biron, the most reluctant of the courtiers declares in Act I:

These are barren tasks, too hard to keep
Not to see ladies, study, fast, not sleep!

And his words become prophetic with the arrival of the Princess of France and her ladies-in-waiting.

Their visit challenges the good intentions of the King and his courtiers who fall in love to comic effect!

Unusually for an Elizabethan comedy, Love’s Labour’s Lost has a twist in the tail and the students, under the direction of Paul Christie, added their own twist – transposing the action from late 16th century Spain to the roaring twenties: age of flappers, flicks and fantastic jazz.

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