Huntington gets more than laughs from Bard
''Love's Labour's Lost" is not a Shakespearean crowd-pleaser akin to ''A Midsummer Night's Dream" or ''As You Like It." Its two central characters, Berowne and Rosaline, can seem like early, less-colorful versions of the great Benedick and Beatrice of ''Much Ado About Nothing." The comedy was discounted by many 18th- and 19th-century critics for lacking the joyfulness of his other comedies.
But if watching ''Love's Labour's Lost" does not yield the glorious madcap pleasures that Shakespeare's other comedies do, the play provides other rewards, particularly in a production as good as the Huntington Theatre Company's.
Nicholas Martin has called ''LLL" Shakespeare's most Chekhovian comedy, and he and set designer Alexander Dodge smartly underscore the sadness beneath the comedy. A central tree sports leaves that suggest fall's turn to winter, for example. And Martin doesn't go to any extra lengths to make up for the lack of a traditional happy ending, which many directors have.
The play, set in Navarre and updated here to the early 20th century, opens with four young aristocratic men swearing off any contact with women while they devote themselves to their studies for a year. When the Princess of France arrives with her three attendants, all bets are off.
What has given audiences problems with the play is the ordinariness of this central octet. There are no havoc-wreaking Pucks or transformative Forests of Arden, just these four confused young men and four fairly dismissive women.
But that, in turn, makes this the playwright's most modern comedy. Shakespeare knew, long before Freud, the dangers not only of bottling up your libido but also of what happens when you take the cap off: in this case, falling head over heels with someone you just met. Berowne, the most irreverent of the four men, is the most skeptical that they will stay masters of their domain for long, which makes him a somewhat Seinfeldian commentator on what's about to follow.
Noah Bean handles that assignment with gusto. Bean caused a sensation five years ago when, as a Boston University graduate, he stepped in at the last moment to play the lead role in ''Philadelphia, Here I Come!" at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. He was terrific then and he's better now, even if he strains a bit in voice and gesture for exclamation points.
Even funnier is Will LeBow as Don Adriano de Armado, a full-of-himself Spanish character who served as something of a punching bag for Elizabethan audiences. (Remember the Armada?) He and Jeremy Beck as his page, Moth, are a riot, whether shooing away pianist Robert Mollicone or joining some of the local rustics for other antics. Local favorites Neil A. Casey and Bill Mootos are deployed to fine comedic effect in smaller roles.
Almost every male in the play is a target of Shakespeare's distaste for pretension, and the women, with their trickery, fare little better. Don Adriano and the secondary characters are more sympathetic, at least in Martin's production, than the eight central characters.
These foolish young people have some of Shakespeare's most gorgeous poetry and wittiest wordplay to speak, but as individuals, they're not particularly memorable. Martin brings back Zabryna Guevara from ''Sonia Flew" as Rosaline and Mia Barron from several Huntington productions as the Princess, and they breathe some life into their characters.
What exactly about these eight lovers -- Berowne excepted -- would get the pulse racing? Maybe a less buttoned-up look by costume designer Mariann Verheyen would have provided some heat. Maybe Shakespeare was just saving his best for ''Love's Labour's Won," the lost sequel.
It's just as well that it is gone. Imperfect though it is, celebratory though it isn't, Martin and company make the uniqueness of ''Love's Labour's Lost" something to savor.
Ed Siegel can be reached at siegel@globe.com. 
