27 June 1985
f all Shakespeare's greatest plays, Troilus and Cressida
can appear the most intriguingly modern. At its centre is an exchange of
hostages between a nation under siege and the invading army. Our scene is
Troy, after seven years of war sparked by the abduction by Paris of Menelaus's
Helen. Howard Davies's new RSC production places us, literally, in the House
of Troy, a decaying bomb-strafed classical manse, where Priam's dynastic
ménage is pinioned in a martial echo chamber: the family pile is
full of noises.
Ralph Koltai's design of crumbling masonry, dislocated
doorways and slatted blinds is conceived in the Philip Prowse style, with
a catastrophic explosion in the final battle scenes and falling swagged
drapes as Hector dies. The Greek generals assemble in fustian grey and the
chandelier goes out, a convincing switch. Pandarus, first seen reading a
Greek newspaper, is at ease in either camp, Achilles and Patroclus lurk
at the top of a large, extravagant staircase; Thersites is a recalcitrant
Geordie potman cleaning up by knocking over chairs filching drinks from
a tray at the social gathering of top dogs from each side; Paris a burgundy
frock-coated drunk with a black monocle.
Liz da Costa's costumes (and the programme, which even
by recent Stratford standards is a
scrappily presented insult) evoke a late 19th century mood, perhaps of the
Crimean War. This play was discovered for the modern theatre by Tyrone Guthrie's
1956 Old Vic first world war version; since the Hall/Barton sand-pit version
of the early 1960s, the RSC has continued to profit in its excavations.
Howard Davies might have done likewise had his ideas been executed with
panache the production more attentive to basic values of verse-speaking
(generally atrocious) and overall pace.
Koltai's set is all very well, but the ingenuity of its
uniform location is scuppered by clumsy furniture changes. Throughout actors
are too busy drinking tea, playing tunes on wineglasses or waiting for someone
to reach the top or bottom of the stairs. By the time we reach the battle
scenes--the worst here for ages--Pandarus's farewell to our aching bones
is all too pertinent.
The anachronistic gloss is not dissimilar to Trevor Nunn's
on All's Well a few years ago. And as a sequel to Davies's "periphery
of war" work (Days of the Commune, Much Ado, Mother Courage)
the show has vestigial merit. Alun Armstrong's hilarious music hall Thersites
is not so much a scabrous observer as a press-ganged hunchback in thick
pebble glasses who avoids the front line by volunteering for domestic duties
with cabbages and things.
In recent years there have been notable contortions to
make elements of The Shrew or The Merchant palatable to contemporary
liberal sensibilities, but nothing so crass as here perpetrated by Davies
and his Cressida, Juliet Stevenson. They are unwilling to suggest that Cressida
is either false or sluttish after the exchange with Antenor, and simply
censor the play's meaning without re-writing the words.
Cressida becomes an oppressed victim of chauvinist bartering
and in the overheard love scene with Diomedes (Bruce Alexander's "sweet
honey Greek" is a pinch-mouthed, unattractive subaltern) she appears
to be pleading for escape. On "Troilus farewell" she seems she
has accepted defeat, but what of the "fault" she finds in women?
It may be hard cheese on the RSC feminist puritans, but Shakespeare is writing
about falsity and sexual wantonness, not rape.
Miss Stevenson is too good an actress to be uninteresting
and she produces two remarkable emotional outbursts: on the initial acknowledgements
of her love for Troilus, and on "My love admits no qualifying dross"
when pitched into the exchange deal. Meeting Agamemnon and the rest in the
" kissing " scene, she is subjected to a coarse and brutal treatment
that you might generously argue justifies her attitude to Diomedes.
She is curiously mismatched, anyway, with Anton Lesser's
small and ferret-faced Troilus. This Troilus registers little feeling about
Cressida until the display with Diomedes. And that could not possibly convince
him that the letter is a fraudulent [sic] expression of her love. With the
exception of Alexander Wilson's gloating Aeneas and Clive Russell's touchingly
bovine, blockish Ajax, few of the younger actors are seen to advantage.
Alan Rickman's Achilles is a temperamental, idly
articulated slouch, lacing his wine with medicine after seven years' draining
participation in the war (a good touch, that), projected into the duel with
Hector (David Burke) in tearful rage at the death of Patroclus (Hilton McRae).
Clive Merrison's white-suited Pandarus is, confusingly, the resident sardonic
pianist of some 1940s Hollywood movie, although I liked his original line
in a sexual wheedling and the daring antics--not altogether successful--among
the carousing Greeks. Lindsay Duncan's Helen confirms at a glance that the
futility of the war has been compounded by a collapse of interest in the
sottish, rather stiff-jointed Paris of Sean Baker.
Late 19th century revolutionary turmoil Is conveyed in
llona Sekaez's crashing piano score of Chopinesque pastiche, if not in the
casual whisky-and-cigar aroma of the council meetings. Richard Conway's
Calchas is too anonymous for this key role, but Colin Douglas's Priam and
Mark Dignam's Nestor are both watchable and audible. So too, is Peter Jeffrey's
Ulysses, a slyly model major general with a destructive twinkle in his eye
and a voice of silken, garotting thread.
Back to:
Troilus and Cressida Page