Photography Tristram Kenton

We cover a lot of theatre, and unsurprisingly that means we end up seeing a lot of Shakespeare. While the bard wrote dozens of plays, the same few – we’re thinking Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Macbeth, Hamlet – are revived time and again. What a treat it is, then, that Shakespeare’s Globe has dug out one of his lesser-known texts for this summer’s comedy.

We weren’t sure what to expect from Love’s Labour’s Lost, having never seen or read it before – but if you’ve ever seen a Shakespeare comedy, you’ll recognise many of the devices at play here. Love letters get mixed up and fall into the wrong hands; characters in disguise employ some very silly deception tactics; cases of mistaken identity mean we see people attempting to woo the wrong suitor. We’re familiar with these sorts of narrative devices but it’s nice to see them attached to a new storyline.