Love’s Labour’s Lost, Shakespeare’s Globe

Last Updated on July 30, 2026

Flirting and Flamenco in a Bailar of the Sexes

5.0 out of 5.0 stars

Why isn’t Love’s Labour’s Lost a better loved Shakespeare play? It borrows familiar components audiences know from other pieces – the disguises of Twelfth Night, the “play within a play” antics of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and plenty of romantic chicanery and silliness. 

Less frequently staged than the Bard’s best-known comedies, Love’s Labour’s Lost is now reimagined by director Indiana Lown-Collins in a passionate flamenco-inspired production at Shakespeare’s Globe. Just two on stage – Pablo Egea and Anita La Maltesa – are professional flamenco dancers but the ensemble cast put on a heel-stomping performance between spoken lines.

With London temperatures worthy of Seville, it was as steamy in the wooden galleries as it was on stage. There was blood, desire and amongst the sweaty groundlings, some swooning. For those of you unfamiliar with Love’s Labour’s Lost’s thinly woven plot, it involves the King of Navarre, in northern Spain, and his friends swearing off women for three years. Except they immediately fall in love with a visiting Princess and her various ladies in waiting. The resulting sexual frisson and flirting is an apt backdrop for the fiery flamenco moves. 

For a play that can be criticised for being linguistically dense, the dialogue was very easy to follow and frequently laugh-out-loud funny. I’m intrigued to go back to the text to see how much of this hilarity was evident in Shakespeare’s writing or unlocked by the production. Love’s Labour’s Lost has few familiar lines but is musically poetic with actors bouncing couplets off each other. 

Between sixteen cast members – several of whom play two parts – the flamenco artists and musicians, no-one fully dominates the stage and everyone gets chance to shine. Moreover, the episodic flamenco sequences break up the action such that attention is more than held, you will be gripped.

Norah Lopez Holden, previously seen at Shakespeare’s Globe in Eyam and A Winter’s Tale, balances coquetry and earnestness as the Princess, particularly with her toreador dance sequence with a “bull” on a B-stage in the yard. This evocation of bullfighting reinforces the play’s themes of courtship, display and tension. 

Joshua Hill (theatre credit Dear England) brings lots of laughs and endearing innuendo with his suitably Baldrick-like fool Costard. One feels sorry for Costard that he doesn’t get paired up with anyone, but then, unlike most Shakespeare comedies, no one gets married here, and requitement of love is tantalisingly postponed all round.

It is a truly funny show: with plenty of high points I might mention, the men disguised as Muscovite dancers with bushy beards and cod-pieces bring the house down, as does a wooing scene with verse delivered to the tune of Ricky Martin’s Livin’ La Vida Lorca. 

The bright costumes add to the visual appeal of Shakespeare’s Globe’s authentic setting here decorated blue and gold with patterned tiles; normally I might namecheck set and costume designers but the programme lists an entire team of prop, wardrobe and wig assistants. Their contribution is such that I didn’t realise until after that around six cast members were playing two parts. 

My favourite of these was Katy Stephens, an Associate Artist with the Royal Shakespeare Company. As Maria, she brought can-can dancer knicker-flashing exuberance to encounters with the men folk, then as Holofernes, a comic character portrayed as a RADA-esque version of Mrs Overall-on-holiday in polka dots. We badly wished her I Loveth Navarre beach tote bag prop had been for sale at the merch stand. 

Of the male characters, I enjoyed the hair-swishing presence Philip Arditti (theatre credit: Henry IV) brought to Berowne, Jax Guerrero’s equally lovable Dumaine/Moth parts and tight delivery of Daniel Crossley’s upright but witty Boyet. Ned Costello is a cartoonish King of Navarre who seems like one of the boys amongst his coterie rather than a monarch, but that’s in keeping with the romp energy seen here. 

What makes Love’s Labour’s Lost appeal to modern viewers is that the couples engage in verbal sparring rather than women obligingly falling in line. The men’s peacock strutting looks fabulous in the skinny Spanish trousers. As well as verbal gymnastics, and the flamenco elements, this a show in which you’ll find plenty of physical movement, jumping off plinths and creeping up ladders. Wherever you sit, you’ll notice this and the dancing even mingles in the yard at several points. 

As a high summer production being performed outdoors in Iberian temperatures, Love’s Labour’s Lost had blazing passion and climactic rhythms for tongues and tapping feet alike. The audience often clapped along to the beat, and enjoyment on and off stage was palpable; it’s hard now to imagine a version of Love’s Labour’s Lost without the flamenco. Highly accessible and entertaining throughout, this is a memorable production that will delight newcomers to Shakespeare as well as more serious sonnet lovers. 

Love’s Labour’s Lost – until 13 September 2026

Shakespeare’s Globe
21 Globe Walk
London
SE1 9DT

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