NEW YORK—The power of love can be a curious thing, as evidenced with the very enjoyable production of William Shakespeare’s Love’s Labor’s Lost, presented by the Public Theater as part of their Public Lab series.

King Ferdinand (Hoon Lee) of Navarre and his three close friends, Lords Berowne (Nick Westrate), Longaville (Keith Eric Chappelle), and Dumaine (Jorge Chacon), have pledged via an official proclamation to closet themselves in the King’s castle for three years, forsaking the company of women and all other pleasures of the senses (such as good food) in order to devote themselves to study.

However, Ferdinand has overlooked the fact that the Princess of France (Renee Elise Goldsberry) is about to arrive for a visit. After some discussion on whether to grant the visitors a waiver, the King determines to hold the moral line and bars the Princess and her entourage from the castle, lodging them instead in a nearby field.

Yet once the King and Princess lay eyes upon one another it becomes a case of love at first sight. In addition, the ladies attending the Princess, Rosaline (Rebecca Brooksher), Maria (Samira Wiley), and Katharine (Michelle Beck), all have prior experiences with Berowne, Longaville, and Dumaine respectively, and all find themselves quickly becoming attracted to them, their feelings being mutually returned.

In no time at all, the men are passionately writing love notes, while trying to hide their feelings from their friends. (After all, no one wants to be the first to break the King’s proclamation, let alone the King himself.) Of course, the path to true love doesn’t come easy as the ladies, getting wind of their gentlemen callers’ intentions and believing they are not as serious as they state, vow to teach a lesson to those who do not woo wisely.

One of Shakespeare’s better early comedies, Love’s Labor’s Lost carries the gentle lesson of how important it is to be true to oneself. Yet the work also contains the realization that love is more than just soft language, passion, and merriment, with responsibility, bitter learning, and pain also part of the package.

The play is also an enjoyable combination of poetry and prose, with dialogue flowing trippingly off the actors’ tongues, often in rhyming couplets. Some tinkering with the script had been added here and there (I don’t think Shakespeare wrote, “Musical comedy, the two most glorious words in the English language”). The work had also been streamlined somewhat, with some of the characters getting a bit shortchanged regarding stage time.

The cast was all enjoyable, but there was no getting away from one inherent problem in the script. Specifically, since much of the story focuses on plot instead of characterization, most of the cast was basically interchangeable, and one was forced to judge them in regard to how they reacted to situations instead of who they were.

Standouts here included Westrate as Berowne, who had the best lines and Shakespearian one-liners in the show, as did Brooksher’s Rosaline—matching him verbal joust for joust. Also good were Lee as the King, who found love triumphs over honor more often than not, and vice versa, and Goldsberry as the Princess.

Another quite funny performance was that of Reg E. Cathey, hamming it up to the hilt as Don Adriano de Armado, a Spaniard at the King’s court and an aging fellow madly in love with country girl (aka wench) Jaquenetta (Stephanie DiMaggio in a wonderfully seductive turn).

However the roguish knave Costard (Mousa Kraish), a young man who also had designs on Jaquenetta, never really rose to his full potential, though he certainly looked the part. His character and storyline got lost in the production.

Also enjoyable was Steven Skybell as Holoferdnes, a learned schoolmaster pontificating on weighty subjects and firmly believing every word he utters, no matter how ridiculous.

Direction by Karin Coonrod deserves great credit in regard to the staging of the piece. To compensate for the lack of scenery and stage space (the production took place on a green carpet), Coonrod had the cast running up and down the aisles and stairs, all of which allowed the audience to be close to the actors and story. There was also some nice (nonverbal) ad-libbing with the various characters being struck by love’s unerring arrows.

Lighting by Brian H. Scott was fine, and the music by Tony Geballe was excellent. Costumes by Oana Botez Ban were rather interesting: The men are clad in a sort of suit/breeches outfit giving them the appearance of self-important schoolboys. The garments reflect their inner attitudes, at least before they are given the chance to learn some valuable life lessons.

At its heart Love’s Labor’s Lost is a romp through the kingdom of romance, and this cast, despite the limitations of the script, brought the tale to life quite well.

Also in the cast was Francis Jue.

Judd Hollander is the New York correspondent for the London publication The Stage.