Production
Branagh became interested in the play during his 1984 season with the Royal Shakespeare Company, when he had played the King of Navarre. From that period, he was familiar with Harley Granville-Barker's famous essay arguing that Love's Labour's Lost could be treated as highly stylized, with the dialogue and action treated with an almost musical sense of rhythm. Branagh took this insight a step further and turned the play into a musical, going much further in his adaptation of the play than he had ever done in his Shakespeare films, and risking the alienation of both audiences and serious critics. This decision also allowed him to revisit the Hollywood film musicals he had loved in his youth.
Branagh cast the film without much regard for singing or dancing ability; as in Woody Allen's Everyone Says I Love You, the film was meant to highlight energy and enthusiasm rather than smooth competence. Of the cast, only Nathan Lane was known primarily for musical work. Preproduction was dominated by rigorous dancing and singing coaching.
Branagh reversed the philosophy he had used with Hamlet (that is, to keep every word of the original), and instead made major cuts in the play's text. The released version retains only about a quarter of Shakespeare's lines; although Branagh managed to include all seventeen of the original speaking roles, some (most notably among the lower-class characters) are cut almost to nothing.
Read more about this topic: Love's Labour's Lost (2000 film)
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