Time Out London
26 February, 2003
By Jane Edwardes

Shakespeare's early comedy breaks the convention in that all comedies should end in marriage; instead there is only the possibility of nuptials to come. Ian Judge's RSC production some years ago imagined that World War I might even prevent the men of Navarre getting together with the women of France. Now Trevor Nunn takes the idea one stage further and begins the play on a WWI battlefield in which Berowne, following Rosaline's instructions, is tending to the injured when he is wounded himself.

Thus, as a huge, blasted tree bursts into leaf, Berowne lies close to death, dreaming of happier tmes. It's a conceit that suits the play's Arcadian setting and linguistic artificiality as the efforts of the King of Navarre and his male compatriots to give up the company of women in exchange for monastic studies are underminded by the attractions of the Princess of France and her ladies-in-waiting.

Typically, Nunn's work is richly detailed but also sometimes over-explanatory, to the extent that anyone seeing this play for the first time might well judge the playwright to have been exposed both to Victorian novels and to Chekhov at his most lethargic and wistful. There's a persistent soundtrack that wouldn't have pleased the Russian; or maybe it's just that the Olivier's microphones are even more intrusive than usual.

Joseph Fiennes leads the company as Berowne. I've always felt that he's an actor who takes himself rather too seriously, but here he's lithe, quick-witted, as well as very funny, and well matched by Kate Fleetwood's Rosaline, a New Woman who is determinedly informal in long hair and cap compared to her more coiffured confederates. Robin Soans could hardly be bettered as the learned, self-satisfied schoolteacher whose conceit is cruelly punctured.

So, farewell Trevor Nunn. He will be remembered for his classical interpretations at the National, especially of The Merchant of Venice and Summerfolk. LLL doesn't quite reach those heights, but the wistful nostalgia of this, his final production, could hardly be more appropriate.