You keep lyin'/When you oughta be truthin'

You keep losing/When you oughta not bet

You keep samin'/When you oughta be/A'changin'

What's right is right/But you ain't been right yet...

The Beatles, the Doors and the Rolling Stones will provide the musical beat to Cincinnati Shakespeare's season opener Love's Labour's Lost, set in the swingin' '60s. .

But the lyrics of go-go booted Nancy Sinatra pretty much nail the plot about four college age buddies who decide to forego love until a quartet of gorgeous women show up and they have to lie to the ladies and to each other rather than admit that, well, maybe it was a bad idea in the first place.

Think psychedelic limes, oranges, purples and yellows, pink go-go boots, bell-bottoms and hippie hair.

Director Brian Isaac Phillips chose the comedy with an eye to the festival's season theme, "In Love & War."

"I wanted to start with a comedy that turned on us at the end," says Phillips. "I wanted to give the impression of life moving on as normal and then coming to a screeching halt when the unexpected happens."

In Labour's, Shakespeare sneakily writes an ending with no real ending - we don't know what happens to our would-be lovers, we have to arrive at answers on our own.

"I feel as if the political events of the '60s are a great frame of reference with enough distance to allow everyone to get inside the play," Phillips continues.

"It's about 'the one that got away.' We're going to speak to younger audiences about falling in love for the first time and older audiences about whatever happened to the first true love."

Love's Labour's Lost, Sept. 9-Oct. 3, Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival, 719 Race St., 381-2273.

Jackie Demaline