LOVE'S LABOURS

posted by James Reel

Last week, I teased you with a positive comment about the new Arizona Repertory Theatre production. Now here’s the review, from this week’s Tucson Weekly:

It just doesn't make sense: Four bright young men want to live forever--at least in other people's memories--by giving up all a young man's pleasures in life. They want to form a renowned academy, and in the process they forswear women, freedom of movement and partying down. The project is sure to fail, especially once four young women show up to distract the guys from their endeavors. Other things don't make sense in this story, which is Shakespeare's _Love's Labours Lost_. The dialog is full of fancy wordplay and obscure topical references that nobody can understand anymore. If a joke needs a footnote, can it possibly be funny? Well, sometimes, yes, for the UA's Arizona Repertory Theatre has managed to mount an utterly hilarious production of this, one of Shakespeare's most peculiar comedies.

The full review lurks here. While you’re at the TW site, take a look at my preview of a one-night performance slated for this weekend:

Harry Clark is a cellist, not a visual artist, but he does create portraits: performances that draw together musicians and actors to tell the story of some remarkable arts figure. Almost (but not quite) all of Clark's subjects have been composers, and those portraits are the backbone of every Chamber Music Plus Southwest season. A new season is about to begin, but with something unusual: a portrait not of a musician, but a painter. Western artist Maynard Dixon is Clark's latest subject. Clark, as cellist, will perform a new score by Tucson guitarist-composer Brad Richter, and he's assembled a script drawn mainly from Dixon's writings, to be read by actor John Schuck. Schuck has most recently made sporadic appearances on _Law and Order: Special Victims Unit_, but he's probably best remembered as Rock Hudson's police sidekick in the 1970s TV series _McMillan & Wife_. He's also been spending a lot of time in revivals and tours of such musicals as _Annie, 1776_ and _Annie Get Your Gun_. Schuck won't be singing, just speaking in the Maynard Dixon show, which is titled _Go Ask the Little Horned Toad_. It's being presented in conjunction with an exhibition of Dixon's work at the Tucson Museum of Art, the organization that commissioned the performance.

The whole story is here.