Rushing to make history: Double Falsehood at Southwark’s Union Theatre

If you are a Shakespeare geek, a student of Shakespeare, or are studying the Renaissance literary period, you may have been aware of a theatrical curio which has, on Saturday, finished its short run at Southwark’s Union Theatre. The curio in question? Double Falsehood, a play that may or may not be partly by Shakespeare that was recently redeemed from academic purgatory by the publishers Arden, who commissioned Nottingham University scholar (and modern day Lewis Theobald) Brean Hammond to lead the heavily bastardized manuscript into the muted light of specialist bookshops and university libraries everywhere. Hammond, incidentally, has also given his blessing to this KDC Theatre production and has contributed a description of the play to the programme, in which he writes of it as ‘a pacy, stageable play – a “rattling good yarn”, full of excitement and event’. Much of this description is proved true by director Barrie Addenbrooke’s reverent staging, which makes use of original costumes and tampers very little with what is, arguably, an already somewhat piecemeal play script.

The plot centres around two women, Leonora, a chaste maiden, and Violante, a formerly chaste maiden who is dishonoured by the villainous Henriquez in the opening scenes of the play. Henriquez is one of those men who sees every woman as a challenge, who cannot eat, sleep, or breathe until he has had his way with that challenge, and who, when he has had his way, quite naturally loses interest and must find another challenge. He is also the son of a duke. Having reft Violante of whatever the controlling patriarchy calls it these days, he sets his sights on Leonora, and has her fiance Julio–his supposed friend–called away to serve at court; so much, so David and Bathsheba, or perhaps, The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Once Julio is out of the way, he sets about solving a problem like Leonora, with her turncoat father–who previously promised her to Julio–assisting at every turn. Their attempts to force her down the aisle eventually precipitate Leonora’s decision to commit suicide, although her weapon is discovered and she is prevented before she has a chance even to attempt it. This shocks her father back into a human being again, and she somehow–it is confusing–manages to escape to a nunnery in the mountains. In the second half of the play we catch up with Violante living among shepherds in those same mountains. Cue the re-entrance of Roderick, Henriquez’ virtuous older brother, who has promised his father he will bring the recreant to order, and then to the court. Roderick gathers up the women, along with Henriquez, brings them all before the Duke, Julio et al., and it’s unlikely reconciliations all round and everyone marrying the person Deuteronomy says they should marry.

But what about this production of Double Falsehood? I suppose I’m obliged to say I think it’ll only appeal to the hardcore third-year university English Literature students, and even then, ‘appeal’ is stretching it. The problem is mostly that it’s a terribly play. I’m not saying it wasn’t a decent play at one time or another during its history–I’m quite fond of the Fletcher-Shakespeare collaborations that weren’t ‘discovered’ by Theobald–but it certainly isn’t one now, and probably wasn’t one even when Theobald got his oft-travestied hands on it. I could spend a wilderness of keystrokes disparaging the play here, but will satisfy myself only with saying that for a comedy it is not, by any standard, funny. Only a highly ambitious theatre company would attempt to stage a play like this, and I can only conclude that the KDC is, indeed, highly ambitious. But it doesn’t come off. The Union Theatre stage is too small for this play, too cramped. The decision to employ traditional costumes worsens the cramp, somehow both psychologically and physically; few off-West End stages can accommodate a dress with whalebone hoops sewn through the skirts. A minimalist staging might have worked better. The actors, with one notable exception, struggled with the script and with the ridiculously changeable characters. To be perfectly honest, if you somehow managed to combine the talents of Henry Irving, Laurence Olivier, Sarah Bernhardt, and Sarah Siddons into one body, that Frankenstein’s monster of talent would have trouble making most of the characters in Double Falsehood seem convincing, so none of the company, if they are reading this, should take it to heart.

And the positives? A stand-out performance from Helen Kelly as Violante. My programme tells me she is currently completing an MA at Guildford School of Acting and is a previous winner of the Young Soprano of the Year competition; on the strength of her performance in Double Falsehood she will be a successful actress. Elsewhere some nice directorial touches lightened the mood. Violante’s maid (played by Samantha Calver) helped to distinguish the character of her essentially virtuous mistress from her own with a few seductive glances and a loosely-laced top; the derisive way in which she ‘obeyed’ her fallen mistress spoke volumes about the sexual economy which is a central concern of the play. Giving the two travellers Fabian and Lopez (played by Waylon Ma and Brian Tynan, respectively) a Monty Python-esque feel also worked well.

Double Falsehood may well be a play with Shakespearean seeds, and this KDC Theatre production may have sown the seeds for a much better, larger-scale production of the play at some point in the future. Only time will tell.