Fake Shakes(peare)

   
Plaster the name ‘William Shakespeare’ on your theatre posters, and you’re sure to get bums on seats – even if Shakespeare didn’t quite write the play in question. That’s the rationale behind the slew of productions of the mysterious Cardenio, or Double Falsehood, the latest of which has opened at the Union Theatre.  This latest production is fresh and pacy – and buoyed by energetic performances by Emily Plumtree, Emily Plumtree and Adam Redmore – but it’s hard to watch without a gnawing sense of astonishment at the chutzpah of the company’s claim to place this flimsy curio alongside masterpieces like Macbeth or Measure for Measure.

There are few global brands as successful as William Shakespeare. Setting aside that the man himself left for us the subtlest, richest traces of the human imagination ever to stamp their imprint on our shared consciousness, the name represents a powerful set of marketable values.