30 June 1985
LEASURE and revenge have ears more deaf than adders to
the voice of any true decision.' Hector's words are the essence of Troilus
and Cressida.
Howard Davies's penetratingly intelligent and visually
seductive RSC production at Stratford-upon-Avon
bets this torrent of destruction in a Crimea-like conflict in the nineteenth
century. It's a brave decision to take at Stratford where the murmurings
of tourists lamenting the absence of togas and other suitably Shakespearian
tailoring are audible between the scenes, but it makes revealing sense of
the themes principally the ineffectiveness with which chivalry and courtly
love attempt to conceal the raging undercurrents of hypocrisy, lust and
vainglorious barbarism.
For all that, the production can't prevent the play's
being just one damn thing after another. Greeks besiege Troy to win Helen
back. Troilus and Cressida conduct a doomed affair across the line. Heroes
slug it out for the sake of virility more than veracity. Revenge, betrayal
and finally a dying man's curse unremittingly punctuate the downhill slide
of irrational impulse unchecked. their pay-off dust and ashes.
Ralph Koltai's beautiful baroque ruin--gray-speckled
like a grotesque vulture's egg and hung with rotting canvasses and the spectral
drapes of Brobdignagian removal men--serves as war room and battleground
for Greeks and Trojans alike. The two sides are discernible by rusty red
hussar trappings for Trojans and Confederate grey for the Greeks.
The company are an ensemble in the best RSC traditions.
But if Anton Lesser (maybe because the trim of his beard makes him resemble
Kenny Everett) is a disappointingly lightweight Troilus, Juliet Stevenson
is nevertheless a startling and forceful Cressida. Her interpretation has
been reviewed as 'feminist,' a misnomer unless any female with as much sense
as sensuality must be so called. Stevenson's own percipience about women
must surely have given her the insight to play Cressida as a human being
torn between love and survival, rather than as a flirtatious plaything,
but if that's all it takes to make a feminist, then almost every woman on
the planet can count herself in.
More tellingly, it's a performance that points up the
hypocrisy inherent in the view of Cressida as faithless hussy. Her beloved,
after all, has handed her to the Greeks and her choice (barring suicide)
can therefore only be one between rapist and protector. That she chooses
the latter is hardly surprising. The other outstanding performance is Clive
Merrison's Pandarus, parasitically pimping for his niece and endeavouring
to please all sides until, all dignity gone, he slumps among the ruins of
the civilisation he knew, thumping out a mournful waltz on one of its last
artefacts--the piano that alone remains intact in Koltai's crumbling mansion.
His dapper, creamy-suited, panama-hatted persona is a metaphor for wasted
elegance, moral turpitude and the helplessness of civilians in the face
of carnage.
Alun Armstrong's Thersites, a mournful Geordie clown
whose whiplash wit protects him in adversity and whose pebble glasses and
Tweedledee-like penchant for sticking saucepans on his head is riotously
funny. Alan Rickman's over-the-top but disarmingly rakish Achilles, Hilton
McRae's romantic Patroclus, Lindsay Duncan's feckless Helen and Clive Russell's
great big daftie of an Ajax are among many fine supporting roles.
But radical, humorous and frequently brilliant as the
production is, it is low on soul. At nearly four hours, Troilus and Cressida
is an epic, and difficult, play. If it is really to sear the spectator
it must show broken humanity rather than gored gladiators, and this it only
fitfully achieves. This is not only the director's, but also the author's
failing.
Back to:
Troilus and Cressida Page