Review – Troilus and Cressida, Royal Shakespeare Company at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 18th October 2018

Posted on October 19, 2018 by therealchrisparkle

It’s hard to imagine, but it’s been 42 years (!) since I last saw a production of Troilus and Cressida. Back in 1976, young Master Chrisparkle got on a train to London to see the National Theatre production at the Young Vic, directed by Elijah Moshinsky, starring Denis Quilley, Roland Culver, Robert Eddison, Mark McManus and Simon Ward. Good grief, all those actors are dead now!

This is one of Shakespeare’s hard-to-categorise plays. Traditionally it was always lumped into the comedies, because it’s not a tragedy and it doesn’t fit the usual definition of a history, as it doesn’t concern a British king. But it doesn’t sit comfortably as a comedy either, and the temptation has always been to pretend that it doesn’t exist. According to Wikipedia, so it must be true, there were no recorded performances of this play between 1734 and 1898; that’s pretty extraordinary, considering it’s by our Immortal Bard. Along with Measure for Measure and All’s Well That Ends Well, it’s now considered a “problem play”, which makes it sound like it’s going to be hard work to appreciate.

But that’s not the case at all. The excellent programme notes (the RSC always do great programmes but this one is outstanding) include extracts from the late John Barton’s old directorial notes from previous productions, and he points out that the strength of this play is in its sheer bloody-mindedness not to fall into any categories. The characters contradict themselves; the relationships between them change unexpectedly, with neither rhyme nor reason; it doesn’t succumb to any set pattern; in fact, it’s just like real life. So rather than trying to make it a one size fits all kind of play, celebrate the fact that it just goes its own way.

Gregory Doran’s new production does precisely that, although he has made one imposition on the play – to cast it 50:50 between men and women. As a result, we have a female Agamemnon, Ulysses, Aeneas, Calchas and Thersites, as well as women playing traditionally male servant roles. In one respect, it makes hardly any difference at all; a military woman is pretty much the same as a military man when uniformed and concentrating on strategies and tactics. In another respect, it does shed different light upon the play; it makes you see something familiar with new eyes, creating an excitement and a freshness that you might not otherwise have expected. This is one of many innovations in this production that works really well.

It’s a rewarding, surprising play. It deals with themes of honour and betrayal, order and disorder, even celebrity versus mundanity. Achilles, the celebrity warrior, is sick of fighting and just wants to lounge about with his “masculine whore” Patroclus; his reputation sullied, not so much by his debatable sexuality as by what Agamemnon describes him, “in self-assumption greater than in the note of judgement”. It’s only when his Greek warrior colleagues play a trick on him, pretending not to notice him, that his vanity is offended; and not till Patroclus is killed that he is spurred into action.

The Greeks and the Trojans are locked in a military and political impasse, causing them to bicker between themselves, but showing amity between the two parties. “This is the most despiteful-gentle greeting, the noblest-hateful love that e’er I heard of” says Paris, as Aeneas and Diomed confer amicably. Before Hector and Ajax can fight, they choose peace. “The obligation of our bloods forbids a gory emulation ‘twixt us twain”, says Hector; thus honour prevents him from surely killing Ajax. Yet, Achilles, with gross dishonour, sees Hector killed, not by his own hand in glorious war, but, ironically, outsourced to the Myrmidons while Hector is unarmed.

Plonked in the middle of all this is the growing love between Trojan prince Troilus and Cressida, niece to Lord Pandarus, who serves as something of a Courtly Fool. He moves heaven and earth to get the two together, but after one night of connubial bliss, fate separates them; they both, unhappily, accept the fact that the politics of the state are bigger than both of them. They vow to stay true to each other, but that doesn’t last long; another excellent example of how the characters of this play don’t perform as you’d expect. The misleading title suggests that the love affair between the two will be the most important element of this play; but that’s simply not so.

This is a lively, funny, and extremely watchable production with some very creative and entertaining highlights. Oliver Ford Davies’ Pandarus’ hilarious running commentary, explaining to Amber James’ Cressida the benefits (or otherwise) of each of the warriors who parade past them like some military Mr Universe pageant, works brilliantly well. His fussing around Troilus and Cressida’s morning after arrangements, checking for signs of consummation on the sheets, is also superbly done. Pitching Sheila Reid’s diminutive and wretched Thersites side by side with the tall and fit Achilles or Ajax also gives some great physical comedy moments. And I loved the play on words with “The Trojans’ trumpet”.

And then there is the innovative involvement of having Dame Evelyn Glennie as the production composer. If you know Dame Evelyn’s work, it’ll come as no surprise that you can expect percussion – and a lot of it. That’s great for the war scenes, as the drums suggest marching armies and the metallic clashes represent sword on shield or armour against armour. Softer motifs also provide incidental music for some of the characters; again the programme notes tell us how she has orchestrated the two central lovers differently. And no opportunity is missed to fill in any details suggested by the text; when Pandarus is irritated by the sound of music, he’s not the only one. But it’s true, sometimes the excitement and creativity of the background music can overwhelm what’s happening on stage, and we found it difficult to make out some of Ms Reid’s bon mots as she observes the vanities of the warrior classes. That’s a shame, because she clearly gives it some suitably savage characterisation. As the other Fool in this play, the crude and visceral Thersites provides a lot of important context; but it’s no good if you can’t hear it.

There are long sequences between the Greek warlords that are very wordy, particularly in the first half of the play. To make them more palatable, Gregory Doran has pantomimed-up the characters into a larger-than-life presence. Thus we have Suzanne Bertish’s Agamemnon, all swirling hair and fighting talk, rather like Anna Soubry MP on acid; Andrew Langtree’s Neanderthal Menelaus, constantly interrupted by Agamemnon to stop him from saying something foolish; Adjoa Andoh’s super-intelligent and manipulative Ulysses; Theo Ogundipe’s estuary Ajax, just about stringing a sentence together; Andy Apollo’s languid, too cool for school Achilles; and Jim Hooper’s dirty-old-man Nestor, taking a peck on the cheek with Cressida too far, to the disgusted, retching reaction of the audience. This outrageous, tongue-in-cheek approach to the characters oughtn’t to work; but it does, tremendously. These are all fantastic performances.

Gavin Fowler gives his Troilus a nice mix of nobility and naivete; hopelessly hapless with his chat-up lines but dignified in his deference to the instructions of King Priam and valorous in battle. Amber James also invests Cressida with some gutsy personality, not backward in coming forward when Troilus is too tongue-tied to step up to the mark, and suitably flexible when she has to hold her own in the Greek camp.

A couple of things puzzled me; I didn’t understand the significance of the weird collection of pots and pans and old bits of car that suspended from the ceiling, and shook clankingly every so often; and I wasn’t sure why Helen and Paris made their appearances from inside a pod that dangled down to earth, like a celestial conservatory. But John Barton’s notes had already guided me into not expecting to understand everything.

It’s a thoroughly entertaining production, and if you haven’t seen Troilus and Cressida before, this is a delightfully accessible and stimulating experience, that I’d totally recommend. Terrific performances from Oliver Ford Davies, Suzanne Bertish, Theo Ogundipe and Adjoa Andoh make 3 hours 15 minutes go by remarkably quickly. At the Royal Shakespeare Theatre until 17th November – don’t miss it!

Production photos by Helen Maybanks

Review – Desire Under the Elms, Crucible Theatre, Sheffield, 30th September 2017

Posted on October 4, 2017 by therealchrisparkle

I must have been a very mature teenager. Why else would I have read voraciously almost all Eugene O’Neill’s plays during the long summer of 1976? I’d seen Olivier’s famous Long Day’s Journey Into Night on TV and thought to myself Now That’s What I Call Drama, Volume One. There was a revival of The Iceman Cometh by the RSC that year – I didn’t see it, although the title intrigued me so much – so I decided to read up on O’Neill’s back catalogue. No one else I knew was reading him. Mourning Becomes Electra became my favourite. Eugene O’Neill sure knew how to create a fancy title.

O’Neill’s introduction to Desire Under the Elms states that it’s set in a New England farmhouse in the year 1850. No coincidence this date, as it’s the beginning of the Gold Rush to California, the newest state to join the United States, and as much a beacon of hope and inspiration as Moscow is to Chekhov’s characters. The play opens with brothers Simeon and Peter fantasising over what it would be like to leave the miserable farm behind and go hunting for gold in Californi-a (pronounced Californ-eye-ay). But their father, 75-year-old Ephraim, is out west and they feel they have to stay at home until he returns.

They share the farmhouse with their half-brother Eben, who’s lamenting the death of his mother, and has no love lost for his father. When Ephraim returns with a young wife, Abbie, less than half his age, it’s clear she’s got her eye on inheriting the farmhouse. Simeon and Peter sell their shares in the farmhouse to Eben and head off to Californi-a to seek their fortune. This just leaves Eben and Abbie at the farmhouse. With Ephraim out working all day long, Abbie falls pregnant, and Ephraim assumes it’s his, but the truth may be somewhat different….

Like many of O’Neill’s plays, it’s based on Greek tragedy; in this case Euripides’ Hippolytus. Phaedra attempts to seduce Theseus’ chaste son Hippolytus, but when she fails she commits suicide, not before having left a letter accusing Hippolytus of rape. Theseus banishes Hippolytus as a punishment, but Hippolytus is killed by a bull, after which Theseus discovers the truth. Unlike Phaedra, Abbie’s attempts to seduce Eben are perfectly successful (not that he was chaste anyway) and it isn’t suicide that she considers but murder.

It’s actually a very simple plot and could easily have been written for just three actors. Simeon and Peter are purely introductory characters helping to set the scene, and the other villagers are just there to fill the stage and act as Rumour. As I remember from my teenage years, Desire Under the Elms is one of the more difficult of his plays to read, because O’Neill wrote it in that interminable North American dialect drawl. Everything is “purty”, parents are “Maw” and “Paw”, they eat and drink “vittles” and “likker”. On the page it’s dry and dusty, but on the stage of the Crucible it really comes to life. I don’t have the sharpest ear, but the speech patterns came over (to me at least) as though they were from the Southern states – I clearly don’t know my American accents. By contrast, all Mrs Chrisparkle could hear was an Irish twang, which would, at least, probably accurately reflect the characters’ heritage. But none of that matters when you’re dealing with the raw emotions of an inevitable love triangle, and someone who commits an unlikely crime passionel to resolve it.

When you enter the Crucible auditorium, there’s a huge visual impact from the amazing set that Chiara Stephenson has created. Long tufts of grass, wheat maybe, lurk in the distance, suggesting fields or dunes; sand covers the foreground. The simple mechanism of sweeping sand away in straight lines creates separate acting areas on the stage; most notably a demarcation wall separating the farmhouse from its grounds. Jon Clark’s moody lighting suggests different times of day and different emotional impulses at work. Nick Greenhill’s portentous sound design evokes the most realistic and invasive thunderstorm since poor Tom was on the blasted heath. There’s even a working water pump at the very front of the stage – which I have to say somewhat obstructed the view from seats B20 & 21, especially when people are seated at the dining table.

Matthew Kelly is a fantastic Ephraim. He looks every inch the grizzled old man, wayward hair and beard unkempt through so many years of toil. If this is how he’s smartened himself up for scoring himself a 35-year-old woman, heaven knows how ragged he must have appeared before. Bellowing at the world for all its failings, and belligerent towards Eben for his perceived weakness and inadequacy, this is a man with a strong sense of his own importance and not a clue about how pathetic he really is. This is captured in his grotesque over-the-top final Act dance; he’s got a lot of life in him but no ability to shape it into something positive. It’s a mark of Mr Kelly’s great performance that you can both despise and feel sorry for him at the same time.

Michael Shea plays Eben as a man with few principles – a thief, user of prostitutes and happy to steal his father’s woman off him for the pleasure and the power. You feel that he has so much pent-up anger inside him that he will explode at any moment. He’s a wretch, though; and Aoife Duffin’s Abbie is no better, instantly falling for this grim chap with no ambition or style. Ms Duffin really brings out all Abbie’s remorse, confusion and horror at what she’s done at the end of the play. She and Mr Shea make a truly agonised and agonising couple, as the horrendous consequences of what’s happened dawn on them. I also really liked Sule Rimi and Theo Ogundipe as Simeon and Peter, very convincing as the old hands who’ve seen it all and can’t wait to get away to a new life. In a sense, it’s a shame that we never find out what happens to them; on the other hand, that just proves how focussed O’Neill is on his menage à trois.

An excellent opportunity to catch a great cast perform a hidden classic. It’s important to keep Eugene O’Neill’s creative spirit alive! Desire Under the Elms plays until 14th October.

Production photos by Marc Brenner