Almost caught up on theatre reviews – there are two productions of Macbeth that I’ve been saving until I see Sleep No More, at which point I can review them all together. Other than those, the only thing I’ve left out is CSC’s recent production of Double Falsehood.

Double Falsehood purports to be a version of the lost Shakespeare/Fletcher play Cardenio. All I can say is if Shakespeare was in any way involved in this play, he must have really needed the money, and whoever produced it must have really needed the Shakespeare brand to get the production off the ground, and didn’t require the man to do any actual writing. There is not a trace of wit or inventiveness in the plot or in any character. If you want to prove to yourself that Shakespeare really was something different, that you can’t just throw cross-dressers and deceitful brothers and tyrannical fathers and other elements from various Shakespearean dramas together and get Shakespeare, check out this play. You will leave utterly convinced of the Bard’s exceptional genius, in that you will find it completely lacking from this work.

The production did little to bring the story to life, seemingly organized around the proposition that the text should speak for itself. With this text, that might not have been the optimal choice.