For many, the ‘Shakespeare conspiracy’ is the theory that the man from Stratford didn’t write the plays we now ascribed to him. Instead, Christopher Marlowe, the Earl of Oxford, Mary Sidney, amongst others, was the real ‘Shakespeare’ – tellingly, the conspiracy theorists can’t agree on a candidate.
In Andrew Shepherd’s bizarre play the conspiracy is far more complex and imaginative. The Bard’s heroes and villains are alive, they fight over a magical fictional/reality barrier and work for a shadowy government organisation called ‘the Royal Shakespeare Company’. And it is Shakespeare’s remorseless villain Iago who wishes to re-write the Bard’s works in order to destroy to the world. This is Shakespeare in Love meets Dr. Who, via Stargate.
Confused? You will be: the plot is somewhat convoluted. Scenes at the beginning and the end contain too much exposition and revelation in order to explain odd twists, turns and gaps. But lack of narrative cohesion aside, there is much to enjoy here. At the ‘self-help’ group for Shakespeare’s villains, we see Edmond (Lee White) the bastard from King Lear spectacularly fail at rehabilitation, egged on by an ever manipulative Lady Macbeth (Leonora Barton). White’s excellent timing and gurning provides much of the comedy here, and throughout the play. Jack Baldwin and Libby Evans are a spirited and charismatic Benedick and Beatrice who bicker over the domestic details of a 400+ year marriage. Alethea Steven’s endearing, and a little hopeless, Jules is trying to escape her failed marriage to a wet and indecisive Romeo. Shepherd knows his Shakespeare and plays with it well. His cut-and-mix of Richard’s seduction of Lady Anne from Richard III with Helena’s declarations of love for Demetrius from A Midsummer Night’s Dream is inventive if surreal. We even get a bang up-to-date reference to the discovery of Richard III’s remains in a Leicester car park.
Zahra Mansouri’s impressive set embodies the divide between the fictional and the real world – one side the RSC offices stuffed with Shakespeare memorabilia, and the other the Globe stage, complete with an accurate painted replica of that theatre’s pillar. Theatre and acting are the play’s obsessions and so, perhaps unsurprisingly, the tone is knowing, melodramatic and camp, and this does begin to grate after a while. The major speeches are underscored with sound effects and music too many times, something which gets in the way of the flow of the play. But despite these issues, the performances are wonderfully exuberant and the production as a whole is a lot of fun.
