Troilus and Cressida Review

Troilus and Cressida

Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon

My week at Stratford-upon-Avon finished with a performance of Troilus and Cressida. The RSC and an American theatre company, The Wooster Group, have collaborated to create this production. This would be the third Shakespeare play I am seeing for the first time this year.

This play is set during the Trojan War, where the Greeks spend several years besieging the city of Troy to take back the abducted Helen of Troy. The story follows two Trojan lovers, Troilus (Scott Shepherd) and Cressida (Marin Ireland). The lovers are separated when Cressida's father, Calchas (Scott Shepherd!?) defects to the Greeks and subsequently asks them to negotiate the exchange of the captured Trojan general, Antenor (Zbigniew Bzymek), for his daughter. Elsewhere, the Greeks have become lax after years of besieging Troy and their greatest champion, Achilles (Joe Dixon), refuses to fight for them. The Trojans meanwhile debate whether it is worth continuing the war for Helen (Scott Handy!??).

The idea behind this collaboration is that the two companies each play one warring faction. The American Wooster Group play the Trojans whilst the RSC play the Greeks. This allows them to show the differences between the two factions. The Wooster Group is an experimental company and it shows in the Trojan scenes. They present the faction as Inuits in a Alaskan setting. At first it was unclear and looked odd seeing the Wooster actors running on the spot and speaking softly using microphones, in what I assumed were Inuit accents. Once it was realised what their idea was, it was interesting to hear the amplified voices and music create this icy world. That said, the actors were at times inaudible against the loud music.

However, another idea they had was to use a number of small screens dotted around the stage showing clips that really did not relate to the story. All they do is show "real inuits". What the actors do with these screens is copy the actions that occur during these clips.  This idea of mimicing actions on screens hampered their acting since a lot of the time they were staring at these screens waiting for the cues to mimic what happened in the clips. For example in the scene where the lovers first meet lacked chemistry because they were also interacting with screens! This gets tiresome quickly, and it does not help that this takes up half of a 3 Hour and 35 Minute production. This may be the first week that this production has been on, but I cannot see how this can be improved upon since it is, rather sparsely, timed and would have to be radically edited.

The saving grace of this production was the RSC company. In comparison to The Wooster Group, their contribution felt like an acceptable RSC standard. The best performances were Joe Dixon as the soft hearted, yet mighty, Achilles, and Scott Handy as the shrewd and resourceful Ulysses. There were some odd characters, such as Aidan Kelly sporting a pumped up muscle costume as the boorish Ajax, whilst Zubin Varla played the fool of the play, Thersites, as a transvestite. What was more bizarre was that Scott Handy also played the part of Helen, the woman "who launched a thousand ships", in her one appearance.  The gender change roles I have seen earlier this year at the RSC I could accept, but this one took me aback and seemed to have little point to it. Yet in comparison to labourous interpretation provided by The Wooster Group I took  the occasional odd interpretation of roles by the RSC for granted.

As well as the screens there were sound desks at the back providing the visceral sounds through a collection of loudspeakers hanging above the stage. Also at the back was a revolving stage with a metal wall on it. Whilst the wall added to this icy world, by revolving it the two factions could be shown on either side of the wall. The Greek side consisted of an assortment of objects around a teepee tent whilst the Trojan side was bare except for the occassional set piece that they brought on. The Trojans wore traditional, styrofoam Inuit clothing, though occasionally they dressed the backs of their heads with some form of cast derived from classical statues, thereby connecting them to the play's original setting. Why they would do that I do not know. The Greeks meanwhile wore modern army uniform. I would just like to note that there were brief scenes of nudity.

A 3 Hour and 35 Minute production, where half of it consists of staring at screens, is quite a challenge to sit through. Yet the other half managed to make this watchable. The play itself was interesting to watch but I would like to see this produced better next time. It was obviously not to everyone's taste because about a third of the audience, including my companion, left at the interval.  Tread carefully, but only see this production at a Restricted View.