The RSC production of Love’s Labours Lost has received lavish, if not quite ecstatic praise – four stars rather than five in our brave new Trip Advisor world of criticism. We saw it the other night via the live broadcast from Stratford and judging from the conversation around us emerged almost alone in our reservations.

The play itself has plenty of flaws. Four men falling in love with four women at the same moment is a contrivance made necessary by limited time, but a contrivance nonetheless. Their being deceived by the donning of masks might be a comment on the limits of male constancy but still stretches belief to breaking point. And so on. These plots should never be taken too seriously – the language is what most of us come for; but the joins show, the mechanisms creak on the modern stage.

That brings me to the figure of Don Armado, although I blame the production more than the playwright for his portrayal. To an Elizabethan audience the Spanish were enemies, Love’s Labours being written only a few years after the Armada. Ridicule is a handy weapon against oppressors – witness the lampooning of Hitler. We have fewer excuses, however and poking fun at someone’s funny accent (whose own language most of us could not be bothered to learn) is the limpest, laziest trope of English humour, superiority and inferiority complexes rolled into one. ‘Piss’ for ‘Peace’, ‘Arse’ for ‘Arts’: is that really the best we can do?

Something similar can be said with regard to class, there being occurrences in many Shakespeare plays of toffs laughing at or patronising the hoi polloi. I often find this uncomfortable but try not to apply my prejudices retrospectively. These days, and particularly in the current climate a well-spoken, hereditary élite poking fun at the lower classes is much harder to take. The decision to place the action in Charlecote, a citadel of more recent wealth and privilege increases my discomfort. The aim is to show that era on the verge of collapse, and a contrast in fortunes may well be evident in this production’s companion piece Love’s Labours Won which I have yet to see. But as inequalities widen to Edwardian levels and tax-dodging plutocrats loot our public services it is hard not to take offence.

In short, a self-congratulatory spirit informs this production. It is Shakespeare for les satisfaits: the old, well-heeled or (judging by the younger faces picked out by the cameras) privately-educated. But now there is a wider audience to be catered for. Live screenings by the RSC, the National Theatre and other companies have opened up access like never before – a boon for people like us who live in the sticks and a fabulous revenue stream. But enlarging the catchment area means responding to more mainstream tastes, and there were two signs of this yesterday. The introductory interviews with members of the cast brought well-intentioned but patronising messages about not understanding all of the speeches and letting the whole thing ‘wash over’ us, the modern-day Costards and Dulls. More significantly there seemed to be a distinct drift towards musical theatre which has done well for the RSC in recent years and has virtually replaced serious drama in many places. Several characters, Moth most noticeably burst into song at regular intervals and although these may be in the text is there any need to turn them into big production numbers? If this is dumbing down it brings echoes of Tom Stoppard’s play The Hard Question – also coming soon to a cinema near you. He has already made changes to accommodate customer bemusement at the subject matter and complained at the declining intellectual range of playgoers. What price a further concession along the RSC’s lines? Stand by for Consciousness: the Musical.