TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. To 12 March.
Mold/Cardiff
TROILUS AND CRESSIDA
by William Shakespeare
Clwyd Theatre Cymru (Anthony Hopkins Theatre) To 5 March
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat 2.30pm
Audio-described 24 Feb 3 March 26 Feb 2.30pm
Captioned 5 March 2.30pm
Talkback 24 Feb 3 March
then New Theatre Cardiff 8-12 March 2005
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Mat Thu & Sat 2.30pm
Audio-described 12 March 2.30pm
Runs 2hr 45min One interval
TICKETS: 0845 330 3565
www.clwyd-theatr-cymru.co.uk (Mold)
029 2087 8889
www.newtheatrecardiff.co.uk (Cardiff)
Review: Timothy Ramsden 19 February
Audacious, bold, challenging a thrilling production.This eloquent revival of Shakespeare's Trojan War play has a spare elegance that reminds Terry Hands was long-term artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Doubtless the RSC could have provided more subtle classical verse-speaking than sometimes occurs here. But all in Mold is clearly thought-through.
This is a love-story without the sweetness of Romeo and Juliet; a war-story without the heroism of Henry V, its abrasive cynicism forming a disenchanted portrayal of life as sex n' violence.
This vast, accomplished cast present it vividly on Johan Engels' set, according to the lighting either a dark, baked-earth war-zone, criss-crossed with vehicle tracks from 7 years' fighting, or glistening with suggestions of battle-mud. Bowed to create a dead-end valley (and hint at the ship-shape which brought the Greeks to Troy), it may open with a gold-armoured warrior Prologue, but this brightness disappears, only seen again in the culminating battle where the armour is dismembered and thrown aside.
In these otherwise muted colours, love and honour go rancid. It's a mood expressed in Ben Fox's viper-tongued Thersites, a mocking, blood-scabbed reductionist, his imitation of Dyfrig Morris's bullishly militaristic Ajax (whom he calls a-jakes', punning on an Elizabethan word for toilet) like a vertical caterpillar mimicking a slow-witted elephant.
Fox's angled, lolloping figure, swirling his black cloak crow-like sums-up the War as the argument of a whore and a cuckold referring to Philip Dunbar's perpetually mocked Menelaus, and Victoria Pugh's briefly-seen Helen, souring towards bored middle-age.
Age and wisdom are sucked into this, John Cording's grizzled Nestor an old man behaving badly, Simon Armstrong's philosophical Ulysses, his nose ever in a book, using his intelligence for cynical manipulation.
Add Gerard Murphy's self-displaying Achilles and Steffan Rhodri as a Diomed who coldly takes Cressida's affections and no wonder young love sputters out. Hands perceptively links the two themes as Achilles' treacherous ambush of Hector is prefigured by a decadent bondage game at the pre-battle debauch.
Only Jenny Livsey's desperate, briefly-seen Cassandra carries moral conviction in this brutal world so fully-realised in this masterly production. Though Shakespeare's England's greatest playwright, never has Clwyd, with this largely Welsh cast, seemed more like Wales' national theatre-in-waiting.
Prologue/Agamemnon: Joshua Richards
Priam/Calchas: Jeffery Dench
Hector: Adrian Bouchet
Paris: Steven Elliott
Helenus: Grahame Fox
Troilus: Daniel Hawksford
Aeneas: Robert Perkins
Antenor: Michael Geary
Pandarus: Johnson Willis
Helen/Andromache: Victoria Pugh
Cressida: Leila Crerar
Cassandra: Jenny Livsey
Menelaus: Philip Dunbar
Ulysses: Simon Armstrong
Achilles: Gerard Murphy
Ajax: Dyfrig Morris
Nestor: John Cording
Diomedes: Steffan Rhodri
Patroclus: Daniel Llewellyn-Williams
Thersites: Ben Fox
Soldiers/Myrmidons: Steve Davies, Dan Holden, Adam Jones
Director/Lighting: Terry Hands
Designer: Johan Engels
Sound: Kevin Heyes
Fight director: Terry King
2005-02-21 08:49:51