4 July 1985
oward Davies' magnificent and penetrating production
cuts straight to the heart of one of Shakespeare's bleakest plays. Set in
the Crimea War, against the faded splendour of Ralph Koltai's design--a
baroque mansion complete with cascading staircase--this unerring vision
of disintigration presents a timelss record of all that is unlikeable and
uncivilised in human behaviour. Davies sets up powerful contrasts between
the doomed protagonists as they play out their rituals of war and love:
the irretrievable decadence of Sean Baker's monocled Paris; the well intentioned
but ill-timed idealism of Anton Lesser's passionate Troilus; the inellect
and reationale of Juliet Stevenson's contemporary Cressida; the camp cowardice
of Alan Rickman's Achilles--they all thrash it out in a confusion
of heady scenes, each punctuated by the vile abuses of Thersites, or the
nausiating [sic] masochism of Clive Merrison's utterly corrupt Pandarus.
It is left to Pandarus to presetn the final image of a collapsed civilisation
tapping out its melodious epitaph on a tinny piano, consumed by its own
voracious appetitles. In this assured and poignant production nothing seems
superimposed. And though its hard to talk of truth in a play which repudiates
human values there is a sense of clarity and recognition in this production
which Ilona Sekacz's haunting music and Jeffrey Beecroft's violent and appropriate
lighting thoroughly endorse.
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