26 July 2003: Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost

Hampshire Shakespeare Company. Directed by Jim Ellis. Performing on an outdoor stage constructed in the meadow behind the Hartsbrook School, on Bay Road, in Hadley, Massachusetts

Catching up a little, on this play seen a week ago. An amateur cast of locals, full of enthusiasm and in some cases nicely talented, directed with great élan and clarity by an old colleague and friend. I told him afterwards I had seen more polished, professional productions of this play before, but never one with this much joy in it. The play constitutes Shakespeare’s boldest foray into poetic dramatic language, but this young cast seemed quite undaunted by it all. The audience, including many of high school age, matched the cast in their enthusiasm for the enterprise. If there was a stand-out performer it was surely Marissa Sicley as Moth; Sicley, diminutive, very pretty, and very articulate, is just out of her sophomore year at Turner’s Falls High School but is a veteran of some sixteen productions, the majority of them Shakespearean. It shows. She was a delight to watch.