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Love's Labour's Lost

[Royal Shakespeare Company]

Music & Speeches from the 2014 Royal Shakespeare Company Production

Directed by Christopher Luscombe

Music by Nigel Hess

Nigel returned to the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2014 to score two new productions of Love's Labour's Lost and Love's Labour's Won (or Much Ado About Nothing). Both shows saw Nigel reunited with director colleague Christopher Luscombe (Shakespeare's Globe The Merry Wives of Windsor and Nell Gwynn, and Nigel's own Admission: One Shilling and The Food of Love). Both shows opened in the RSC's main theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon on October 15th 2014 to 5-star reviews and played until March 14th 2015. They then played as part of Chichester Festival Theatre's 2016 season before transferring to the Opera House in Manchester prior to a sell-out run at the Haymarket Theatre in London's West End.

"A blithe spirit and musicality courses through this smart pairing of Christopher Luscombe-directed productions....the whole bound together with Nigel Hess's winning English pastoral- and operetta-inflected score. The jazz-tinged music is glorious." Patricia Nicol, Sunday Times

"And it’s all perfectly paired with Nigel Hess’ chamber-music soundtrack, a harmony of strings perennially teetering towards kitsch, an ode to a lost England." Fergus Morgan, A Younger Theatre

"Leaves you with a song in your heart: composer Nigel Hess has set ‘Come live with me and be my love’ to a tune Cole Porter would be proud of." Georgina Brown, Daily Mail

"'The Seven Worthies' is adapted into the style of an operetta by composer Nigel Hess whose music beautifully enhances the comedy and drama throughout both shows." Mark Ludmon, British Theatre

"No one captures a musical period or mood quite as skilfully as Nigel Hess, and it’s his score that brings life and atmosphere to Higlett’s sets, filling them with songs that speak of Ivor Novello and Noël Coward – all world-worn romance and surging melodies with music used cinematically, accompanying as well as punctuating scenes." Alexandra Coghlan, The Arts Desk

"Nigel Hess's aching, bitter-sweet score anchors the proceedings in period songs that evoke Gilbert and Sullivan, Ivor Novello and Noel Coward." Paul Taylor, Independent

"Nigel Hess has written a score that in one particular number, Come Live With Me and Be My Love, transcends pastiche of Cole Porter to match the melodic grace of its source." Michael Billington, Guardian


Track Listing:
  • 01So Well I Love Thee
  • 02So sweet a kiss...
  • 03Did not the heavenly rhetoric of thine eye...
  • 04On a day - alack the day!...
  • 05Entr'acte
  • 06Have at you, then, affection's men at arms...
  • 07The Russians
  • 08The Nine Worthies
  • 09Oft have I heard of you, my Lord Berowne...
  • 10When Daisies Pied
  • 11Finale
  • 12Act 1 Prelude (Leppard)
  • 13Entrance of Princess (Leppard)
  • 14When Daisies Pied (Leppard)
  • 15The Tears that Swell in Me
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