Love Labour's Found - Greenside Riddles Court - Review

The Edinburgh is big, bold and beautiful, and somewhere that provides a stage to big names and new starters. Fresh new talent can find their space there, a launch pad for little shows grown in schools, universities and drama groups that fit in and fly between the big players. Small fish, big pond, you might say, but these fish are swimming upstream. Most definitely in the case of the Newcastle University Theatre Society who present their comical farce Love Labour's Found written by Tia T in the Thistle Theatre at Greenside Riddles Court.

Jackie (Rachel J) and Kate (Libby J) are contemporary poetry researchers, but with little published recently they run the risk of their department being shut down so in order to save their jobs they come up with an outlandish plan. Perhaps pushed by Jackie, Kate announces that the pair have found a long lost Shakespeare play, much to the excitement of the Dean, also called Dean, played by Max DS. Very much in the way that Nativity's Mr Maddan's lie about Hollywood coming to watch the school nativity, Kate and Jackie's lie attracts the mass attention of the press and they are soon pushed into the spotlight, asked to present a scene from the lost work at an upcoming Shakespeare conference. Can they maintain the lie and come up with something that fits the bill as two people who know very little about the bard, or will they lose their jobs and face prison time for fraud?

Libby J, very much giving young Aisling Bea vibes here, plays the fretting nervous Kate, bumbling her way through stories of how she found the lost play and relying heavily on some old school connections to help make the story stick. She earns many a laugh, especially in scenes where the panic takes over and with her demanding mother played by Charlotte N. In comparison to the shy Kate, Rachel J's Jackie is much more laid back, an act now think later type who constantly tells Kate it will be fine. The two make an enjoyable pair to watch, and a montage type sequence where they work through the night proves particularly effective.

It is the dramatic, passionate and theatrical Oliver played by Will S who earns the biggest laughs throughout, going method and getting into some music whilst ignoring the chaos unfolding around him and delighting in name dropping of some theatre greats. A delightfully funny character, determined to do the Shakespeare right even if the script he is presented with by Kate and Jackie is a little on the suspicious side.

With just a table and a couple of chairs, along with a scattering of props consisting mostly of pieces of paper, this student team create a funny little farce that works very well in the space. The script has some great moments, yet walks tentatively between comical realism and rather cartoonish. It could come from the fact that young performers are playing older characters, or how a lot of action is squeezed into the last 15 minutes or so, or the fact that most have true to life costuming whilst the Dean dons a comic like drawn on moustache, but nevertheless it is light hearted and entertaining. With a little bit of work, it could become a piece that thrives for fans of Shakespeare and comedy, and it is wonderful to see young performers really giving it a go at such a large and famous arts festival.