(Re-)Staging Love's Labour's Lost

Abstract

Michael Kahn, director of the Love's Labour's Lost for the Shakespeare Theatre Company (Washington, D.C.) in 2006, was invited by the Royal Shakespeare Company to bring his production to Stratford-upon-Avon as part of its program staging all of Shakespeare's plays. Kahn set the play in India in the 1960s, alluding to the Beatles' visit to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and invoked several other markers of that time period. The production was a considerable commercial success, both in England and the U.S., and was generally praised for its originality and energy. What no reviewer noticed, however, was that Kahn had offered exactly the same production in 1968 at the American Shakespeare Theatre in 1968. All the publicity for the 2006 production, as well as Kahn's own comments on the company's website, implied or stated that this was a new production. This essay reviews the details of Kahn's production and attendant publicity and the theoretical issues raised by its concealed repetition, and then considers other productions of the play in the 1960-80 period, from China to Bulgaria, that depict the play in more political terms.