This Thursday is Opening Night for the Lethbridge Shakespeare Performance Society’s season of Love’s Labour’s Lost at 7 p.m. in Galt Gardens, with Shakespeare in the Park.
The production will be held throughout the city at various locations and will go out on the road to a few other areas in southern Alberta.
Director Dawn McCaugherty says the production is not one of Shakespeare’s most commonly known plays. “Many people will not have heard of it at all. It’s one of his romantic comedies. Perhaps his earliest. It was written very early in his career.”
“It’s a whole bunch of fun, and not a lot happens in it,” McCaugherty jokes. “It’s really character-based, and heavy on the play on language back and forth.”
McCaugherty adds the production has been set in contemporary times. “We have created our own contemporary world. The costumes and the props we are using will be cotemporary.”
“We’ve added a vaudeville twist to it because it’s so much fun and crazy.”
With an amazing array of music, instruments and 16 cast members, the production has no recorded music.
“All the music is live. We have a pump organ, which we will use in Galt Gardens, and an electric piano. There’s a lot of singing and some sort of dancing. It’s very catchy and from the vaudeville era,” McCaugherty says.
McCaugherty is new to Lethbridge, but grew up in the area. “I moved back here two years ago. My first experience seeing Shakespeare in the Park was last year. I was a drama professor for my career and an actor and director.”
“I was so impressed when I saw Shakespeare here, and how enjoyable it was and how much fun everyone was having. The cast was loving it, and the audience seemed to love it.”
McCaugherty started a Shakespeare company in Toronto called, Shakespeare in the Rough in 1994, which is an outdoor Shakespeare company. “I was artistic director for them for four years, until I moved away from Toronto. That company has been reborn again.”
“I love outdoor Shakespeare and I’ve done outdoor classic Greek plays. There’s something so alive about it. You don’t have lighting or sets, and you’re competing with birds, planes, cars, kids and dogs. It’s a real vibrancy to it. And I think people like that. Audience members like to be in the midst of life, while watching a play.”
Even if people don’t think they like Shakespeare, McCaugherty notes, they will find something in this show they do like. “We hope we get people who’ve never come to Shakespeare before and take a chance with it.”
For locations, dates and times check out facebook.com/LethbridgeShakespeare.
