PRINCIPAL CAST: Ferran Audi (Don Armado); Patrick Forster-Delmas (King of Navarre); Carole Franck (Princess of France); Suzette Llewellyn (Rosaline); Steven Mann (Berowne)

This production ran from 18 March - 10 April 1993.

"Ipswich's Wolsey Theatre enjoys a high reputation in East Anglia for its Shakespeare productions. This year it has ventured a new angle on Love's Labour's Lost by bringing in nine continental actors to perform the play's most obviously continental roles. The point is to reveal the international nature of the play. But the stumbling-block is that, in four cases, the actors' foreign accents are so strong as to render numerous lines impenetrable....It is a mistake to put Love's Labour's Lost into Edwardian attire. Shakespeare's plays belong in the period he set them and/or the period he wrote them and/or the period we live in. To set them in another period is to bypass Shakespeare for the sake of irrelevant nostalgic prettiness....Not surprisingly, the audience falls gratefully on the British contingent. Best is Robert Benfield, who ideally realises the curate Nathaniel's sweet love of learning. Steven Mann has just the right merry attack for Berowne, the play's hero of wit. Richard Cant is a somewhat refined Costard - never the 'clown' Shakespeare calls him - but his sunny, gentle humour brings out the tenderness of tone behind the play's rapierwork."

~ Alastair Macaulay, Financial Times, 25 March 1993.