Adding to what is sure to be a more review-oriented blog now that the touring activities of this trip have been scaled down and the focus has turned more towards the plays...
The Royal Shakespeare Company is making an interesting move putting on Cardenio, a "lost" play of Shakespeare's that many people aren't even sure (or convinced) that Shakespeare wrote. It is also an incomplete play, which gives anyone producing it the challenge of not only interpreting the play in a unique way, but filling in the gaps as well to make a coherent story out of something unfinished. And to take all that and make it good. It is hard work.
Put up to the task is director Gregory Doran, who previously directed the RSC production of Hamlet with David Tennant and Patrick Stewart, and did it extremely well. So I had faith going in that this production would likely be fairly good, but there was still a bit of doubt that it could go wrong. Luckily, it did not.
Doran created an atmosphere with costumes, music, and lighting, as well as with the set design (mostly making use of a mirror in the back--he likes mirrors--and a gate) appropriate to the Spanish setting and completely absorbing. He made another good move by casting talented actors, some in their first professional production, including the lead of Cardenio himself, which worked to the play's advantage. After all, a well interpreted production can still fail if the actors are not good.
But although the play itself was a conventional comedy in plotline, with Cardenio and Fernando fighting over the same woman, some jaunts into a forest, and marriages, if not all happy, in the end. The play reflects several others of Shakespeare's: the lines "love passing well" are also used in Hamlet, Luscinda collapsing at her marriage is like Hero's pretending to die at hers during Much Ado About Nothing, the somewhat forced marriage between Fernando and Dorotea at the end is like the not-so-happy ending of All's Well That Ends Well, a scene where Fernando professes his love to Dorotea from below her balcony seems like a (funnier) version of Romeo & Juliet, amongst others. These similarities are easier to notice during the performance of the play than while simply reading it. Indeed, while watching it seemed the play was written by someone heavily influenced by Shakespeare and his plays, rather than by Shakespeare himself.
Despite all this the production manages to keep the audience entertained and intrigued with actors who flesh the characters out, and who are made to use most of the set. There is music to set the tone. There is a dance number at the end, as is fitting for a comedy, but that is extremely well choreographed to be more than just a romp around the stage, but rather an excellently crafted, intense dance done in what seems like a Spanish style.
Overall, Cardenio is worth watching. Gregory Doran, yet again, turned out another fine production. In fact, it is even more worth watching than the RSC's main-stage production of Macbeth that my class saw last week.
Tomorrow: As You Like It by the Globe Theatre's touring company.
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