Something unconvincing in the City

Love's Labour's Lost | Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds

I've seen some daft attempts to update Shakespeare in my time. High on the inanity list was a Merchant of Venice set in Mussolini's Italy that required you to believe fascist officials would hold Antonio fast in the court while Shylock whetted his knife. I murmured to my companion, "They'll be setting it in Auschwitz next" - only to discover, when I checked, that they already had.

I've seen some daft attempts to update Shakespeare in my time. High on the inanity list was a Merchant of Venice set in Mussolini's Italy that required you to believe fascist officials would hold Antonio fast in the court while Shylock whetted his knife. I murmured to my companion, "They'll be setting it in Auschwitz next" - only to discover, when I checked, that they already had.

Now, shooting effortlessly into my Top Ten of Updating Duds, comes Stephen Unwin's English Touring Theatre production of Love's Labour's Lost. Courtesy of Neil Warmington's design, the rural court of the King of Navarre becomes a state-of-the-art City of London skyscraper, with the characters making their exits and entrances via lifts in a manner peculiarly reminiscent of the folk in Are You Being Served?. The young bachelor lords, headed by Gerald Kyd's vacuously bellowing Ferdinand, are reinvented as snazzily-suited yuppies. The idea that this thrusting quartet would vow to foreswear contact with women and to dedicate themselves to study for three years is not ideally corroborated by the complete absence of books in this swish tower block that they inhabit.

It is possible to relocate this comedy, provided you preserve the contrast between a would-be Arcadia and the love and death that proceed to invade it. The reasoning behind Unwin's transposition is outlined in the programme: "It suddenly struck us that a rich and intriguing parallel could be drawn between the 'early modern' Elizabethan world and the 'postmodern' world of advertising and marketing: where young people can talk and talk and feel nothing." There's certainly potential in this notion of smart youths in both ages who are too hooked on rhetoric to admit to what their hearts are telling them. But the production does dismally little to carry it forward imaginatively. Having Moth (Grant Gillespie) sing "Love Me Tender" to a karaoke machine is a feeble idea. Wouldn't this lot be addicted to the linguistic conventions of e-mail and palm-top computers?

It doesn't help that Unwin's mostly laugh-free account of the play blurs the distinction between the lords and the visiting retinue of the Princess of France. Instead of coming across as possessing a superior emotional maturity to the men, these young women are just champagne-swigging, shopaholic ladettes. So you wonder here why they are allowed to dictate the terms of the postponed happy ending.

One performer stands out from a cast that is largely left struggling in impossible circumstances. Nick Fletcher is delightfully funny and charming as Berowne, investing this character's defensive verbal dazzle with a slightly rueful sense that, deep down, he knows that brilliance is not enough. Apart from him, this Love's Labour's Lost does not feel like a labour of love.

Gardner Arts Centre, Brighton, until 10 March (01273 685861); then touring until 28 April to Darlington, Chelmsford, Cambridge, Wolverhampton, Guildford and Ipswich