In the movie Shakespeare in Love, the theatre owner Philip Henslowe outlines the formula of his new star dramatist, including “mistaken identities … a bit with a dog, and love triumphant”. As the film is set in 1593, the reference by screenwriters Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard is clearly to The Two Gentlemen of Verona in which romances overcome deceit and disguise and the clown Launce has a canine companion, Crab, who is prone to steal the show.
During times of tight cultural budgets, such as now, there is an old theatre joke about the RSC being forced to put on One Gentlemen of Verona. Joanna Bowman’s revival doesn’t quite go that far but has radically cut the text (removing some but not all smut, the antisemitism and some sub-par poetry) for a running time advertised at 80 minutes but in performance 90. The aim is to attract younger audiences: the evening show time is a bedtime-friendly 5pm.
