Though not one of Shakespeare's better-known plays, Love's Labour's Lost is a story still filled with the Bard's classic themes: mistaken identity, wily and strong-willed women and love gone slightly awry. One of Shakespeare's earlier comedies, Love's Labour's Lost begins with Ferdinand, the King of Navarre, and three of his lords swearing an oath to scholarship and to stay away from women for three years. But when it is revealed that the beautiful princess of France is coming to visit with her train, the men are unnerved. Nevertheless, the king insists that their promises be kept and refuses the ladies entrance to his court. The story centers on how the men eventually fall in love with the women and the interactions between the feisty and strong women and the rather hopeless lords. In a frenzy of witty puns and some of the richest, most sophisticated wordplay in his oeuvre, Shakespeare creates a story filled with irony and humor, directed by Steven Maler and presented by the Brandeis Theater Company for this year's Leonard Bernstein Festival of the Creative Arts.The most striking part of the show was the beautiful set. The complexity of the stage (three large parallel flats of stretched canvas painted with a gradient of cream to orange from top to bottom, green pillars with curling imposts and multiple swirling wooden figures with snaking tendrils) and the simplicity of its presentation crafted an almost otherworldly atmosphere on the stage. In conjunction with the intense and colorful lighting, the images that were created onstage were aesthetically breathtaking. One of the most beautiful was the final scene, during which the lights faded to black and there was only the silhouette of a violinist playing a mournful tune, a sustained visual for almost a whole minute. The interaction between the colorful lights and the nude color of the flats was one of subtlety and masterful understanding of theatrical staging and presentation.

The BTC actors were, as usual, quite good. Though there existed a clear distinction between undergraduate and graduate actors because this was a collaboration between BTC and an undergraduate theater practicum class, the few acting flaws were understandable. There is one actor worth special mention: Robert McFadyen (GRAD) played the flamboyant Don Adriano de Armado, a Spaniard caught in the throes of love. McFadyen's goofy "everyman" feel is completely masked as he dons the costume of the gaudy and exaggerated de Armado. Instead he turns into an effervescent and prone-to-leaping dandy who cannot help but entertain with his extravagance, both in personality and word.

The themes of the show were lighthearted to the greatest extent. Love is a stronger force than any determination of man. A woman can bend a man to her every will. Sometimes love makes a fool of us all. And yet, the ending of Love's Labour's Lost is one worth pondering. Though this play is in no sense a tragedy, it finishes with the separation of the lovers, unlike Shakespeare's other comedies in which the characters all get married in the end. The princess receives a message that her father has died, forcing the princess and her train back to France. The men swear that they love them and will also fulfill the oath of scholarship, but the women don't believe them. The women make them promise to wait a year and a day to show that the love for them is true. It's a bittersweet ending: The lords make fools out of themselves as they fall in love with the princess and her entourage, but nothing comes to fruition at the end. However, it's still a refreshing difference from Shakespeare's other plays; in fact, Love's Labour's Lost is one of the only stories from which there are no obvious sources of inspiration.

Love's Labour's Lost is a show definitely worth its place among all the other amazing works of art in the Festival of the Creative Arts this year. The combination of a beautiful stage and arguably Shakespeare's wittiest comedy is a force to be reckoned with, and BTC's production of this fine show is well worth seeing.