FIVE down, 32 to go, York Shakespeare Project's 20-year plan to bash out all the Bard's plays continues to be too much of a private pleasure.

Last night's house was worryingly small, which must be demoralising for this labour of love. Maybe the decision to stage Romeo And Juliet in Rowntree Park next July will bring new impetus.

Love's Labour's Lost, the first comedy to give naturalism the red card, established the template for student behaviour. King Ferdinand of Navarre (Paul Toy) and his dandy young courtiers Berowne (Dermot Hill), Dumaine (John Hasselgreen) and Longaville (David Orme) vow to focus solely on study and self-denial, but we all know how it really works. Wave goodbye to your parents, and it's all girls and partying.

Or here, recast in Edwardian elegance by director Chris Rawson, the student life means picnic baskets, cricket bats, tennis balls and highest society ladies: the Princess of France (haughty yet naughty Beverley Chapman), Rosaline (Mandy Newby), Maria (Fiona Mozeley) and Katherine (Sukie Chapman).

Like driving on a motorway on Fridays, this is a fraught drama, with several trunk roads feeding the traffic-jammed main artery. There is Costard the errant Clown (the outstanding Frank Brogan), then add slothful constable Dull (Lee Maloney), vainglorious Spanish grandee Don Armado (a booming Robin Sanger), the fluttering Moth (Gillian Bayes) and the drunken rustic wench, Jaquanetta (Ali Borthwick). Enter the waffling, scholastic Holofernes (Sam Valentine) and Sir Nathaniel, the curate (Kit Bird), and Shakespeare leads us down the country path of masks and misdirected missives.

In Shakespeare's monsoon of words, men don't say what they mean and women cut to the quick (nothing new there then!). "I don't understand you," the ladies keep saying, and you know the feeling.

There is a barrage of what Boris Johnson would call "inverted piffle", plenty of energy too, but the players in this frippery laugh more often than the audience.

Love's Labour's Lost, York Shakespeare Project, Friargate Theatre, York, until December 11. Box office: 0845 961 3000

Updated: 12:26 Thursday, December 02, 2004