Tonight:
5°c
Fiona Mountford's rating
, Troilus and Cressida is not fit for heroes
By
Fiona Mountford
24 Jul 2009
Each time the RSC trots out the turgid Julius Caesar, I wonder why, if it’s a scintillating bulletin from the ancient world that they’re after, they don’t instead turn to Troilus and Cressida.
For my money one of Shakespeare’s top five plays, this cynical and sophisticated comi-tragi-history is, admittedly, not the most easily accessible work, as Shakespeare sets about the brutal debunking of the myths of a Homeric golden age.
Yet when done well, the piece is riveting. Unfortunately, this lacklustre offering is not done well.
The tone of edgy equivocation should be — but isn’t here — established right from the prologue: “Now good, or bad, ’tis but the chance of war,” we’re told, before the scene turns to a Trojan War in a lethal state of stasis. The Greeks have been besieging Troy for years but have long since fallen to infighting and, in the case of top hero Achilles, sulking intensely in tents.
The Trojans still can’t decide what to do about Helen, the stolen wife who was the initial cause of a conflict that is, as the pox-ridden quasi-chorus figure Thersites informs us, not about military glory but rather “a cuckold and a whore”.
It is, then, not the best time to strike up a romance, and it’s one of the play’s best and most bitter ironies that Troilus and Cressida fight a losing battle to be the central characters in their own drama.
As portrayed by Paul Stocker and Laura Pyper they are a more than usually forgettable pair, with Pyper making the ultimately unfaithful Cressida a shrill-voiced minx with oddly modern purple-streaked hair that sits awkwardly amid all the homo‑erotic torsos and tattoos of the traditional dress.
Matthew Dunster’s production trots through the acts efficiently enough and has a nifty way with the battle scenes but its tone is too insubstantial to capture the work’s subtleties.
Matthew Kelly gives Pandarus decadent hair and a camp demeanour but could make far more of this deeply unsettling figure who is weirdly intent on the sexual congress of the two lovers.
Trystan Gravelle’s effeminate Achilles looks as though he’d be more at home with a mascara wand than a sword, and Paul Hunter drags the role of Thersites down to a tiresomely base level of comedy.
By no means a production fit for heroes.
In rep until 20 September (020 7401 9919, www.shakespeares-globe.org).
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
Reader views (1)
This is 50% excellent as a production - the scenes with the Greek generals have not been played so well in the UK for thirty years or so. The Trojan scenes don't really work - there's a half-hearted attempt to locate it in the Manchester club scene - but the reason for the show's emotional failure is the dreadful REWRITING of the ending. The play ends with voyeuristic Pandarus suddenly chucked onto the battleield, promoted to the status of Chorus, trying and failing to sing a love song, and then bequeathing the audience the syphilis that's killing him.It's shattering black comedy and it crystalises all the desperate anger of the play. At the Globe, Matthew Kelly has been directed to yell out an incomprehensible and embarrassing spoeech in which he suffers a nervous breakdown while recapping random lines from his whole part. PLEASE go back to Shakespeare's words - and, as many productions have proved, the play will shock, thrill and make the audience think. PLEASE.
- Audience, london uk, 24/07/2009 12:12
Report abuse
