The Orange Tree Theatre will be shutting its doors for a refurb this summer and autumn. But rather than going dark it’s going travelling, with a two-part outdoor Shakespeare rep season in the gardens of St Thomas’ college on Richmond Hill, directed by the theatre’s artistic director Tom Littler. Although you’re entirely free to just watch a single play - which is surely what most people will do – Littler’s brace of productions will be exploring the (unprovable, so why not?) theory that Much Ado About Nothing is in fact the real identity of Shakespeare’s ‘lost’ play Love’s Labour’s Won – a work referenced in contemporary records but never positively identified.
Whether it was or not, Littler’s staging will cast Much Ado as the sequel to Love’s Labour’s Lost, with some tweaks presumably being made (or not, it’s theatre, you can use your imagination) to make both plays about the same cast of characters. Love’s Labour’s Lost will be set in England, 1939, as four gallant bachelors attempt to forswear women and focus on their studied; Much Ado will see them come home from war in 1945 and be reunited with the ladies who tempted them in the earlier play.
Exactly how it all works out is TBC, but it caps a pretty remarkable summer for Love’s Labour’s Lost, a largely ignored Shakespeare play that’s getting three London productions this season.
