Richard Lutz reviews Shakespeare’s lost play at Stratford.
It is easiest to take this in chronological order because there’s a bit of confusion here. Explanation is needed.
In 1613, when Shakespeare was fading out of theatre, he reportedly wrote a play called Cardenio with John Fletcher. It was based on a tale by Cervantes which had just been translated into English.
More than a century later a writer called Lewis Theobald dredged it up, re-vised it and slapped it on the stage for 10 performances. He said it was based on a surviving manuscript now lost forever.
Now current Royal Shakespeare Company director Greg Doran has re-imagined it, using the 18th script as a base.
So what you get on The Swan Theatre stage in Stratford is a stew of 17th century drama, an 18th century re-write and a 21st shot at what it might have looked and sounded like.
So, what so you see on the stage? The answer is simple: a beautiful re-creation of mid-Jacobean drama. Per usual in Britain’s most elegant theatre, costumes and set are exquisite, the acting droll and vital and the play pleasingly engaging: a tale of seduction, love and deceit.
Oliver Rix is a floppy haired hero in love with his Lucinda, played with simple quirky grace by Lucy Briggs-Owen. Alex Hassell gets nasty as a devious bad guy and Pippa Nixon is pure and decent as the woman he woes and spurns.
But was there any Shakespeare in this play? The lovers run to the mountains after all kinds of Spanish shenanigans – a hint possibly of Cymbeline or Winter’s Tale. There are flashes of phrases that have that brilliance of Shakespeare; but then again I was hearing it through the script of the Theobald re-working and then through Doran’s re-crafting in 2009.
So, my gut says I was seeing what might have been a bit of Shakespeare but no one will really know unless the original manuscript turns up behind a cupboard sometime in the future.
My guess is the literati will now begin an unending debate about exactly what they saw on stage. But as one friend said to me: ‘It doesn’t matter. Just enjoy the play.’
And I did.
+Cardenio runs until October 6th. Box office: 0844 800 1110
