"troilus and cressida" (cheek by jowl)

unfinished posting






friday 23rd may 2008







"troilus and cressida"



by william shakespeare







cheek by jowl



bite 08 at the barbican
http://www.barbican.org.uk/theatre/event-detail.asp?id=6491








the company









The Trojan War, the defining legend of western literature, is stripped to its raw heart in Shakespeare’s scathing satire on glory, chivalry and doomed love. After seven years of fighting, the Greeks and the Trojans have reached a stalemate. As each renews its thirst for bloodshed, they discover that heroes and heroines do not only fall in battle. By turns terrifying, hilarious, and passionate Troilus and Cressida will be Cheek by Jowl’s most ambitious, large-scale production to date. This four week run as part of bite08 is the only opportunity to see Cheek by Jowl’s English language work in the UK this year.

The Trojan War, the defining legend of western literature, is stripped to its raw heart in Shakespeare’s scathing satire on glory, chivalry and doomed love. After seven years of fighting, the Greeks and the Trojans have reached a stalemate. As each renews its thirst for bloodshed, they discover that heroes and heroines do not only fall in battle. By turns terrifying, hilarious, and passionate Troilus and Cressida will be Cheek by Jowl’s most ambitious, large-scale production to date.
This four week run as part of bite08 is the only opportunity to see Cheek by
Jowl’s English language work in the UK this year.

Troilus and Cressida, Barbican,

Soldiers are hailed as homecoming heroes in Shakespeare's Trojan tragedy
By Kate BassettSunday, 1 June 2008

Complaints have been raised that our troops, these days, do not get cheered. That isn't the case in Cheek by Jowl's modern-dress production of Troilus and Cressida,
Shakespeare's Trojan War saga newly staged by Declan Donnellan. On the Barbican's reconfigured stage, the traverse set (designed by Nick Ormerod) is a long strip of khaki canvas. It suggests a sandy battlefield but also functions as a parade, almost a
catwalk.

Troy's warriors return from their daily conflicts waving proudly to the sound of roaring crowds. They are really soldiers-cum-sporting heroes in their
butch vests, training shoes and what look like cricket pads refashioned by Darth Vader (not wholly convincing). Oliver Coleman's Paris and his trophy-babe, Marianne Oldham's Helen, go on to pose for a photo-shoot in the style of Mr and
Mrs Beckham.

Obviously, that's satirical, but this production is low on sardonic bite and decadent sleaze. Aside from King Priam being bedridden, there's not much sense of a stagnant siege, of the city having taken a battering or of the encamped Greeks really festering. David Collings's linen-suited Pandarus hardly acts seedy at all as he hustles his niece
Cressida into bed with Troilus, and he appears to be dying of TB at the end,
rather than the pox. On the Grecian side, likewise, the bilious cynical commentary on love and war is weakly delivered by Richard Cant's cross-dressing Thersites.

Still, maybe we've had enough obviously fetid productions of Troilus, and Donellan's
innovations – which often deliberately run against the grain of the lines – can be refreshing. Oldham's gorgeous Helen drifts through in a white evening dress as the Prologue, talking about the war with a lightly chilling flippancy, and she haunts the play thereafter. She wanders in whenever men speak of her, like an obsessive memory in the mind's eye – such psychological ghosts being a Donnellan trademark.

Also very clear here is that the titular hero and heroine are a Romeo and Juliet
messed up by war. Alex Waldmann's small, immature Troilus is innately loving, kissing his sick father repeatedly. At the same time, he has a hysterical streak comparable to that of his war-traumatised sister, Cassandra. His insecurity keeps twisting his ardour for Cressida into wary retreats when he's wooing, and then into feverish manhandling when he learns that she must be sent packing to the potentially seductive Greek camp. Lucy Briggs-Owen is a touching Cressida, an
essentially shy, bruised adolescent who is pushed around by the men in her life and
forced into brazenness to survive.

Donnellan often draws exceptional performances out of young actors. Briggs-Owen and Oldham are certainly names to watch. There are a few stiff performances, but the production gains fluidity with interwoven scenes. Dressed up as a crooning cabaret Helen, Thersites rather wonderfully gets both armies slow-dancing together, and Ryan Kiggell's Ulysses is a riveting manipulative bureaucrat, looking timidly bespectacled as he clutches surveillance files.