When Shakespeare Meets Time Travel: A Theatrical Experiment That Works Too Hard To Be Brilliant
Would Shakespeare recognize his own plays if he wandered into Tom Littler’s production at Thomas’ College? Probably not—at least, not immediately. By stitching Love’s Labour’s Lost and Much Ado About Nothing into a single WWII-era saga, Littler isn’t just staging Shakespeare; he’s reengineering him. And while the result is undeniably clever, I kept wondering: Is this a bold reimagining or a solution to a problem no one knew existed?
The Gimmick That Almost Justifies Itself
Let’s address the elephant in the courtyard: Much Ado About Nothing was never meant to be a sequel. Scholars have debated whether it’s a “lost sequel” to Love’s Labour’s Lost for centuries, but Littler treats the idea like a dare. By anchoring both plays in the same characters’ lives—pre- and post-WWII—he gives Much Ado’s abrupt cynicism about love a narrative throughline. Personally, I think this is the theatrical equivalent of building a bridge to an island that doesn’t exist. Yet somehow, the bridge works. The shared cast, the crumbling set between acts, the way Benedick’s charm curdles into postwar exhaustion—all of it whispers, “Maybe Shakespeare was onto something he didn’t even realize.”
Why WWII? A Choice That Feels Both Inspired and Forced
Setting the plays around the war is a masterstroke in theory. The optimism of 1939’s Love’s Labour’s Lost—with its pompous oaths to avoid women—collides beautifully with the trauma of 1945’s Much Ado, where characters cling to petty grudges like life rafts. But here’s the rub: WWII isn’t just a backdrop. It’s a narrative shortcut. By attributing the tonal shift to war, Littler sidesteps the plays’ inherent contradictions. Love’s Labour’s Lost ends awkwardly because Shakespeare wrote it that way. Is smoothing that “rough edge” really an improvement, or just a director’s itch to fix what isn’t broken? What many people don’t realize is that Shakespeare’s “flaws” often hold deeper truths about human inconsistency.
The Real Star? The Audience.
Littler’s boldest move isn’t the WWII angle—it’s the cheeky modern asides that turn the audience into confidants. When Dogberry (played with stiff British absurdity by Matt Pinches) quips about “theater’s oldest trick—eavesdropping!” the fourth wall shatters like a dropped glass. This isn’t just crowd work; it’s a dare to let Shakespeare breathe in the 21st century. From my perspective, these moments are the production’s secret weapon. They remind us that these plays were always alive, always adaptable. Yet I couldn’t help but cringe when the cast burst into song—charming, yes, but also a lazy shortcut to “quaint Englishness.”
When Ambition Overshadows Execution
The first half of the double bill feels oddly inert. The sparse set—a swing, a bar, and a lot of earnest staring—relies too heavily on the “charming English garden” aesthetic. Without the atmospheric lighting and postwar decay of Much Ado, the daytime performances in Love’s Labour’s Lost lack urgency. Chirag Benedict Lobo’s Claudio, so flat in Act 1, blooms only when the rubble and whiskey bottles appear in Act 2. This unevenness raises a deeper question: Does Littler’s concept demand too much from actors playing 17 roles across two timelines? James Sheldon’s Benedick, delightful yet undercooked in the first half, only finds his rhythm when the stakes—and the alcohol—rise.
Why This Experiment Matters, Even If It Falters
What makes this production fascinating isn’t its success but its audacity. Littler forces us to confront a paradox: Shakespeare’s plays are eternal precisely because they resist tidy explanations. By grafting two comedies into a single tragicomic arc, he reveals how ego, self-deception, and the fear of intimacy transcend eras. A detail that I find especially interesting is how the war becomes a metaphor for language itself—something that protects us from vulnerability, as Benedick’s jokes and Berowne’s wordplay both conceal and betray their creators.
Final Verdict: A Bridge Too Far, But Worth Crossing
Is this the definitive way to stage these plays? Absolutely not. But Littler’s experiment succeeds where others fail: it doesn’t just entertain; it provokes. By the time the lights dim on Much Ado’s fractured happy ending, you’re left pondering whether Shakespeare’s true sequel was never about love at all. Maybe it’s about how trauma reshapes us—and how art, even 400 years old, can still surprise us when directors dare to ask, “What if?” Personally, I’d rather see a flawed experiment like this than another “traditional” production. After all, isn’t the point of theater to make us question, not just quote?
