Cardenio at the Maynardville Open-Air Theatre

'Cardenio', one of 2013’s productions on the bill at the Maynardville Open-Air Theatre and best known as one of Shakespeare’s `lost plays’ poses this question in a thrilling adventure of love, sex, betrayal of friendship and honour set in 17th Century Spain.

This season will be the first time in its XVR-year history that Maynardville has presented the premiere of a play by Shakespeare. A play he wrote with his collaborator, John Fletcher.

Sometime around 1612 the collaborators read an English translation of Miguel de Cervantes’s novel Don Quixote.

In it the playwrights found the story of a young Spaniard, Cardenio, and they fell upon it with relish and wrote a play based on the story. It was performed 400 years ago, in 1613. Then the text disappeared, only to reappear over the centuries in publishers’ or theatres’ records or in performances, like the one in 1728 where the producer and editor, Lewis Theobald claimed that his version of the play, Double Falsehood, was based on the lost original by Shakespeare and Fletcher.

In 2010 Double Falsehood was published by the Arden Shakespeare, giving the play a certain authority and claim to Shakespearian `respectability’.

Gregory Doran, one of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s most brilliant directors, and now Artistic Director, became fascinated by Double Falsehood and set about providing his own `re-imagining’ of the text, turning to Don Quixote, to other minor plays by Shakespeare and Fletcher and with the collaboration of Spanish playwright Antonio Álamo, Doran prepared and wrote Cardenio. The play was presented by the Royal Shakepeare Company (RSC) in 2011 and was a major hit.

Artscape and the Maynardville Trust, having acquired the performing rights to Cardenio, will be presenting the first production of Doran’s text since the RSC’s production of last year.

The play is set in Andalucía where young Cardenio is wooing the ravishingly lovely Luscinda.

At the court of Duke Ricardo he tells his best friend the Duke’s youngest son, Fernando, about her. The moment Fernando sets eyes on Luscinda he abandons his romantic interest in a farmer’s daughter, the exotically gorgeous Dorotea, and pursues Luscinda. Betraying his friendship with Cardenio, Fernando marries Luscinda. Cardenio is pushed to the limits of his sanity by this betrayal, while Dorotea is also shattered because Fernando has already `married’ her. How will the play end?

As Professsor Valerie Wayne commented, `...the RSC is working within a venerable dramatic tradition as they stage this tale of fractured friendship and impetuous desire.’ Cardenio is a tragi-comedy, a romance in the manner of The Winter’s Tale and some other of Shakespeare’s late plays with a happy ending. It is comedic, pastoral, tragical, to parody Polonius. It is full of visual spectacle, music, dance and song. It doesn’t only pose the question, `Do you trust your best friend?’, it also explores the idea that `Love for the most part is not love but lust’.

Roy Sargeant directs this first ever Maynardville premiére with Armand Aucamp as Cardenio, Jenny Stead as Lusicnda, Francis Chouler as Fernando, Zondwa Njokweni as Dorotea, Terence Bridget as Don Bernardo, Andre Jacobs as Don Camillo, Adrian Galley as Duke Ricardo and a full cast. Designs are by Dicky Lonhurst. Music is by Michael Tuffin, choreography by Carolyn Holden and fight choreography by Gideon Lombard.

Dates: January 9 to March 9, 2013

Venue: Maynardville Open-Air Theatre
Tickets: R110, R140, R160 from Computicket or through Dial-A-Seat 021 421 7695
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