Troilus and Cressida
SHAKESPEARE Stratford
| Hilton McRae and Alan Rickman |
T SEEMS probable that
Troilus and Cressida wasn't performed on an English stage until 1907.
That's extraordinary, given its quality, yet perhaps also appropriate, given
its modernity. It's almost as if the piece lay dormant, waiting for our
century to trigger some time-switch deep within its casing and ignite the
explosive matter pecked alongside.
Chivalry, as espoused by the hero Achilles, means coming
on the unarmed Hector and ordering his attendant heavies to mow him down.
Glory means tying the dead Trojan's body to a horse's tail and boastfully
dragging it around the battlefield. Love, as represented by Troilus, is
a sort of callow gormandising and, as represented by the coquettish Cressida,
a willingness to be a movable feast, a dish for all seasons. Flanders mud,
Vietnam swamp would seem to have oozed into Shakespeare's mind, in defiance
of all the laws of chronology.Predictably enough, the play has frequently attracted
directors with a liking for modern dress, prime among them, I suppose, Tyrone
Guthrie in 1956. Nor should we be surprised to find that Howard Davies is
now to be added to their number, though admittedly for a production set
at a rather earlier and vaguer period. The swords, the samovar that materialises
on a table at the beginning, may put us in mind of the Crimea; the distant
boom of exploding shells, the flashes that light up the night sky, are certainly
meant to evoke the First World War itself. The production's progress is,
it seems, from the Charge of the Light Brigade to Passchendaele, from a
time which still believes that conflict can be ennobling to one which seems
scarcely to credit any values at all. The set, part of a stately mansion
in the process of disintegration, sums up much. As Hector dies, under a
hail of bullets, he clutches at a great dust sheet draped above the rickety
stairs. Down it comes like a handkerchief/hat has been half-masking a skull,
the last feeble attempt to disguise the already obvious collapse of the
old European civilisation.This is bold, scathing stuff substantially justified
by the play itself. Doesn't Troilus begin by invoking honour, courage, honour,
glory, honour again--and doesn't he end as a sort of kamikaze killing-machine?
Hasn't that grim evolution been paralleled in the part of him which worshipped
and was betrayed by Cressida? That's true; and yet the odd caveat has perhaps
to be added. The distinction so many critics have observed, the one between
the courtly Trojans and the pragmatic Greeks, is less apparent at Stratford
than it might be. Both sides seem much of a muchness, morally speaking,
emotionally speaking, anything speaking. The great lover Paris is a self-satisfied
roué and Helen herself a blend of bar-room doxy and poor little rich
girl. Substitute black leather for their Ruritanian uniforms, and the reception
of Cressida by the Greek leaders could almost be a gangbang at a motorcycle
meet, with each forcing on her sexual attentions which the text indicates
are much more decorous.As this suggests, Davies is sometimes overinclined to
italicise the ugliness he rightly perceives behind the Homeric pretension.
Sometimes, too, he succumbs to a fault not uncommon when directors reach
back into periods they find especially evocative and resonant, that of sacrificing
momentum to atmosphere. There's rather a lot of lounging in the mess over
drinks and cards while an out-of tune piano nostalgically sobs out a dance
that sounds as if it's been collectively free-associated by Chopin, Weill
and several members of the Strauss family. Yet this undeniably adds to the
general sense of sloth, ennui and fin-de-siécle decadence, and it
isn't achieved at the expense of individual character. Indeed, the only
serious failure is Alan Rickman's Achilles, a slovenly loafer in
braces who lacks charisma, force and a proper respect for the English consonant.The lovers themselves are Anton Lesser and Juliet Stevenson,
he peppy and volatile, she artless and a bit gauche, an unreflecting girl
never prepared by nature or nurture to face devious assaults on her integrity.
Both leave a strong enough imprint on the brain-cells, as do Peter Jeffrey's
Ulysses, a spruce and slick diplomat, and David Burke's grave and thoughtful
Hector, and several others. But two members of Davies's cast work their
way rather further into the mind, and they're the inevitable ones, given
the moral thrust of his production.. On the Trojan side, there's Clive Merrison's
Pandarus, a sleazy dandy in a cream-coloured suit who lubriciously capers
around Troilus and Cressida, nudging and smirking, cadging and cajoling
them into one another's beds. And from the Greeks we've Alun Armstrong's
Thersites, a clumsy, scrofulous Geordie who trudges dolefully about the
stage with his face fixed in a goofy pout, vengefully muttering through
teeth like inside-out orange peel. Nothing very highfaluting can be expected
of a war whose running commentator and in-depth analyst is someone like
that.
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