This Is Beautiful: Lovely Little Losers

 I think I've written about this before, but I finally finished "Lovely Little Losers," a series of vlogs recapitulating the story of the Shakespeare play "Love's Labors Lost." You can watch it yourself right here! It uses the same characters as "Nothing Much To Do", the group's adaptation of "Much Ado About Nothing", which I have written about before.

What I really liked about this was being able to see the characters continue to grow and develop. I tried to find some research on if these two plays are thought to be sequels or not and couldn't find much. Beyond that the theory exists that is. And while we're at it, I don't know much about "Love's Labors Lost" either except that it's about some guys who decide not to fall in love and then they conveniently fall in love! Classic Shakespeare.

Anyways so Benedick, Pedro, Balthasar, and their new friend Freddie are all living together while going to university. Essentially everyone is a bit of a mess so they decide to adopt these rules like sticking to the budget and having a curfew and not kissing. Meanwhile Beatrice and Meg decide to come up to visit them with their new friend Kit, they also end up staying with Vegan Freddie since the rules keep them from staying at the main flat. Eventually Freddie starts dating Kit, Pedro realizes that he's in love with Balthasar, and Benedick decides to drop out of uni and travel with Beatrice. But also now Leo has cancer and it's a mixed ending.

The characterizations of these productions are just so good! I love that Benedick has matured quite a bit, and now he's sitting around shipping his friends and things like that. And Balthasar is studying music and Pedro gets into acting and exploring his bisexuality. It's so cute and fun to watch.

My main complaints are about some of the new aspects. I never felt as though I knew the added characters as well, like Freddie or Kit. I totally missed that they were secretly dating for a while. I also have no idea how this possibly maps back to a Shakespeare play, you cannot convince me that Shakespeare had a character called "Freddie" let alone "Vegan Freddie." Plus if this is from the original play, I don't think Shakespeare had a gay couple (Pedro and Balthasar) by the end. I mean it's cute, but I thought it was more of a straight adaptation like "Nothing Much To Do" was.

My other complaint is with the ending. "Nothing Much To Do" felt like it took forever to end, with characters saying goodbye and summing things up for a while. "Lovely Little Losers" ends abruptly, with finding out that Leo has cancer and they have to head home. I think that's why I feel like I've lost the characters (I'm honestly having an emotional reaction over here) and I miss them so much. I think also part of this though is the fact that I have a huge investment in Pedro and Balthasar's relationship haha.

This turned into a really big post, but I loved being able to linger in this Shakespearean universe for a little longer. It definitely was worth the watch and went faster than I thought it would!