The Mary Wallace Theatre in Twickenham plays host to the European debut of the reconstruction of a lost play by Shakespeare and contemporary John Fletcher, based on Don Quixote. Showing March 23-25
Christopher Yates as Quixot, Iona Twiston-Davis as Sancho and Jessica Warrior as the Ass
The Mary Wallace Theatre, home of the Richmond Shakespeare Society, will be presenting a Shakespearean premiere that features a collaboration across a time span of 400 years. The play is the European premiere of The History of Cardenio, a reconstruction of a lost play by Shakespeare and his younger colleague John Fletcher, based on Don Quixote by their great contemporary Cervantes.
It’s the result of over 25 years’ work by Gary Taylor, one of the world’s leading Shakespeare scholars. “This is the most authentic and credible vision of that play,” says its director Gerald Baker. “Professor Taylor is imaginative and theatre-savvy, so he’s taken into account everything we know about the original Cardenio. That’s not just about getting the words right: it’s about making the play theatrically exciting, it’s about telling the story as Shakespeare and Fletcher would have told it with romantic and comic plots mixed, it’s about spectacle and surprise. For once, here’s a ‘Shakespeare’ play where you don’t know the ending.”
And has it worked? Richard Wilson, Sir Peter Hall Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Kingston University, described the first night as a “manic new production by the Richmond Shakespeare Society” and declares that “this beguiling flight of fancy becomes a truly Quixotic extravaganza”.
Emma Lambie as Lucinda and Matthew Tyrrell as Cardenio
Brean Hammond, who has edited one of the key sources for repairing Cardenio, was also highly appreciative: “At best, the acting was very good indeed. The stage pictures were uniformly pleasing: all the systems came together to produce clarity and effect.” And it’s not just scholars voicing enthusiasm. Theatre reviewer Georgia Renwick found “a wealth of romance, a dose of death, more than one case of mistaken identity and a bucket load of bawdy laughs to boot.”
Stella Gheury de Bray, Chairman of Richmond Shakespeare, couldn’t be more delighted with these reactions: “This is a major event and should be recognised as such. We’re demonstrating that the amateur sector can access major new work and produce quality theatre.” The production is a major feature in Richmond Borough’s Festival of Music and Drama, a three-week celebration of the area’s non-professional talent.
And that collaboration across space and time? Production partners (Richmond Shakespeare Society and CUTPURSE) are at its core, with regular RSS actors joined by colleagues from Questors, Tower Theatre and Q2 Players. While most of the cast and crew are UK-based, there are Belgian and Italian members in the company: the lighting designer is from France and the composer of the original music lives in Spain, while the American writer teaches in Florida. Gary Taylor’s work is a collaboration with two playwrights who lived 400 years ago, adapting a Spanish novelist centuries dead. International and time-transcending, The History of Cardenio has come home to its native England.
- The History of Cardenio is showing at The Mary Wallace Theatre in Twickenham from March 23-25. For tickets visit: richmondshakespeare.org.uk or call 020 8744 0547
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