Love's Labours Lost at BYU

Setting the play "Love's Labour's Lost" in wartime is an exciting idea, invoking the jazz club scenery and atmosphere where song and dance could break out at any time. We Americans seem to like the theme as a backdrop for movies, especially romances (i.e. "The Notebook," "Captain America," "Australia"... ), probably because of the easily recognizable costuming and nostalgic familiarity. It also helped us distinguish the men on separate levels, as they were all dressed according to rank. Although I couldn't figure out why Biron was dressed as a lower rank than the other three lover-boys. It's like it set him apart as the center character that he is, without allowing him those extra lines that make him an obvious focus in Shakespeare's original. In fact, after I'd read the play, I could have sworn that Biron was the main 'hero' of the play, but the presentation seemed to downplay that by dressing him down, I suppose.
I think the wartime theme meshed especially well with the resolution of Shakespeare's storyline, as the women could assign the men to service in the military as proof of their love, rather than to isolation in the mountains as hermits. The set up with Moth and Don Armado throwing jokes back and forth really worked well also. It is full of Shakespeare jargon that normally doesn't make a ton of sense, but my friend Ashley, who hadn't read the play, laughed at all the right times, probably also with the help of the cue cards. I think the pacing of this scene was really smart, because the whole play ran pretty evenly, until this scene, which made it seem much more like a battle of wits, and you could tell it was funny even if you didn't understand it. The other time I noticed the pace speed up a little was when the women were gossiping, which I think was very fitting for a vanity mirror scene with a bunch of girls talking a mile a minute.
I thought I had missed something important when I missed the first scene, because all the men were dancing with women, and I thought the story was supposed to be set in a women-free zone. This is what made Costard being caught with a woman so confusing, and there were also a few other things that added to that confusion, including the additional characters that shared some of the women's lines, making it hard to tell which girls were the lovers.
I was also a little disappointed because I think some of Biron's speeches were cut out, including his monologue on love, which is kind of funny. And some of Don Armado's lines were cut short too. Those were just the ones I noticed, so there might have been more. But I think it was probably necessary with the addition of the musical numbers, because the play ended up taking about two and a half hours! I think I actually like the stylistic choice of adding in the musical numbers, because it added to the atmosphere of a night club in that time period. Though I think if the dancing was added in for this purpose, it probably wasn't worth it, considering the confusion it caused. 
However iconic the scenery and costuming, the production probably desired a little more thought towards the application of an older text that had not anticipated this era, but I'm sure it started out with something brilliant!