CYMBELINE RSC The Swan
CYMBELINE: William Shakespeare
RSC The Swan
Ticket Hotline: 0870 609 1110
Runs: 3h 35m, one interval
Review: Rod Dungate, 13 August 2003
Marvellous visual impact, clarity, great moments, but a bit too much of a good thing
Dominic Cooke's production of this Ancient Britons versus the Italians play makes a powerful visual impact (designs are by Rae Smith.) The two worlds he creates are full of detail and delight and contrast wonderfully. The Britons are all dressed inventively in the flotsam and jetsam of our society's class signalling clothes (top hats, servants holding umbrellas) mixed with the ancient and natural (fur, feathers, a horse's tail). We are reminded of early Commonwealth countries and of British Morris traditions. The Italians, suave, urbane, are dressed in light white fabrics and Gucci/ Armani type accessories and accoutrements. It's head-on collisions and mish-mash, but nothing, clearly, by accident: terrific.
The production itself is a slow burning one. It doesn't really come alight until villain Italian, Iachimo, tells princess Imogen how her banished husband's faring. Anton Lesser's performance is magnificent. In this scene, as he lies and wriggles and lies again, the actor's mercurial intelligence matches perfectly the character's. In the scene in which Iachimo watches Imogen asleep, strokes her, kisses her Lesser brings an intense self-obsessed arrogance to the fore: the scene is as disturbing as it is disgusting why do people laugh, this man would clearly rape her if the felt the whim. Later, as he tells Posthumus he's had sex with Posthumus's wife, Lesser reaches astounding levels of arrogance we sense a hatred for the gullibility he finds in Posthumus. After Posthumus goes admitting defeat, Lesser then chillingly seems to subvert the whole thing it's just a game to him. This is a marvellous, rounded, multi-layered performance.
It's Lesser's performance that puts both Daniel Evans's Posthumus and Emma Fielding's Imogen into context. This Posthumus ceases to be an innocent abroad, and is frankly a prat bargaining his wife to win a bet. His line 'We are all bastards' gains more from our modern, colloquial meaning than from the original. Evans does bring both honesty and a level of naivete to the fore later in the play when it counts. We sense a hard-learned journey: now we can, and do, like him.
Fielding's Imogen is attractive to us because she is honest. Fielding makes her transparent without making her twee or boring she combines the qualities essential for Shakespearian royalty, she is down-to-earth and regal. We live through her confusions with her, we think alongside her.
Christopher Godwin, Daniel Hawksford, Simon Trinder create a lovely relationship as banished lord, Belarius, and his 'sons' Guiderius and Arviragus their humour is gentle, genuine and very welcome. Much to be admired too is Ishia Bennison's deliciously wicked plotting Queen.
The production could do with some judicious editing and speeding up though. At more than three and a half hours it's too long: it may be a good yarn, but it's inevitability and tendency towards the two-dimensional means it cannot hold our interest for that long.
Gentlemen: Rory Kinnear and Oliver Maltman
Posthumus: Daniel Evans
The Queen: Ishia Bennison
Imogen: Emma Fielding
Cymbeline: David Horovitch
Pisanio: Aaron Neil
Cloten: Paul Chahidi
First Lord: Nathan Rimell
Second Lord: Bill Nash
Lady: Esther Ruth Elliott
Iachimo: Anton Lesser
Philario: James Staddon
A Frenchman: Keith Osborn
Cornelius: Walter Hall#
Helen: Natasha Gordon
Caius Lucius: Rory Kinnear
Belarius: Christopher Godwin
Guiderius: Daniel Hawksford
Arviragus: Simon Trinder
Soothsayer: Tim Barlow
Gaoler: Keith Osborn
Jupiter: James Staddon
Director: Dominic Cooke
Designer: Rae Smith
Lighting: Chris Davey
Movement: Liz Ranken
Music: Gary Yershon
Sound: Paul Arditti
Fights: Terry King
Music Director: James Jones
Company Voice Work: Jeanette Nelson an Andrew Wade
Assistant Director: Tom Daley
2003-08-14 11:38:53