CYMBELINE. To 23 June.
London
CYMBELINE
by William Shakespeare
Barbican Theatre To 23 June 2007
Mon-Sat 7.15pm Mat Sat 2.30pm
Captioned 16 June 2.30pm
Runs 3hr 5min One interval
TICKETS: 0845 120 7511
www.barbican.org.uk/bite (reduced booking fee online)
Review: Timothy Ramsden 29 May
Keenly intelligent production brings a rambling play to order.
Cheek by Jowl swing in to the remodelled Barbican auditorium for an early summer visit with late Shakespeare. This rambling tale of good overcoming evil (wicked characters; ultimately benign plot) in an ancient Briton owing tribute to the Romans when Julius Caesar was a recent memory, is transformed to 20th-century suits. A princess is central to the plot and her step-mother Queen important, but this is otherwise a very male drama.
Costumes plus a wireless relocate the action around the Second World War, suitable for a British/Italian conflict, though a modern Roman invasion is just one of the incongruities that have to pass unregarded. After all, Shakespeare’s action throws in anything the story needs with the ahistorical wantonness of Hollywood rampaging through the past.
Director Declan Donnellan makes the story as clear as it’s ever likely to be. Performances are crisp, well-spoken and uncluttered. Tom Hiddleston doubles Posthumus, the low-born man banished by Cymbeline for loving the king’s daughter Imogen, and Cloten, cloth-headed son of Cymbeline’s new queen, who’s determined he’ll marry Imogen.
The doubling contrasts Posthumus’s intensity with Cloten’s gesticulating idiocy, while implicitly criticising Posthumus’ doubts about Imogen. And it creates a fine moment as Cloten has his rival’s loyal servant help him put on the coat into which he’d so often helped his master.
Donnellan unifies the spread-eagled action visually on an opened-out Barbican stage. Designer Nick Ormerod suggests the court with a few chairs plus chaise-longue, removed when the action turns to the Welsh wilds, the rough cave of Belarius and his sons staying central as a reminder of the characters’ travels even when the scene returns to court. Meanwhile, the resolute Imogen, in male disguise, circles the stage as the royals speak.
Sometimes, the vivid originality becomes perverse. Belarius is an ex-courtier who would not bring boys up as the wild-men they are here, savagely killing Cloten and eating animal-like from a plate at court. But Gwendoline Christie’s Queen, perpetually kitted-out in regal regalia, her killer manner hidden by smiles and treating enemies like children, is a fine, untrustworthy contrast to Jodie McNee’s forthright, honest Imogen.
Queen: Gwendoline Christie
Posthumus/Cloten: Tom Hiddleston
Imogen: Jodie McNee
Cymbeline: David Collings
Pisanio: Richard Cant
Iachimo: Guy Flanagan
Caius Lucius: Laurence Spellman
Cornelius: Jake Harders
Helen: Lola Peploe
Belarius: Ryan Ellsworth
Guiderius: John Macmillan
Arviragus: Daniel Percival
Company: David Caves, Mark Holgate
Director: Declan Donnellan
Designer: Nick Ormerod
Lighting: Judith Greenwood
Sound: Ross Chatfield
Music: Catherine Jayes
Associate Director/Movement: Jane Gibson
Company voice work: Patsy Rodenburg
Fight director: Terry King
Assistant director: Owen Horsley
2007-05-31 00:56:09