Review
|
TROILUS AND CRESSIDA Oxford Stage Company. Director: Dominic Dromgoole at the Playhouse: until Saturday 12 February 2000 Shakespeare's play Troilus and Cressida is set in time when the Trojan war between the Trojans and the Greeks, over the abduction of Helen, is already seven years old. Questions concerning the ethics behind continuing war for the sake of personal honour are being raised. Helen is called a pearl by some, and hailed as a whore by others. On the other hand, the general decay and chaos in the society caused by the prolonged war is summed up by Ulysses in his discourse on disorder and anarchy among the Greeks, who had become factious. Somewhere between the war camp scenes and council meetings, blossoms a romance (albeit facilitated by Pandarus) between Cressida (a shy, introspective woman, whose verse has a twang of irony) and Troilus, a soldier committed to his love. While Troilus is away, Cressida wavers and turns adulterous. However, the play's title is misleading, the two characters are not the main characters. To think of it among the medley of characters, hardly any character has been developed. That leaves one with a feeling that 'something is lacking'. 'All lovers swear more performance than they are able, and yet reserve an ability that they never perform; vowing more than the perfection of ten, and discharging less than the tenth part of one.' (Troilus and Cressida; Act III.ii.) This is the problem with the play. The play showcases a lot in terms of philosophy of war and ethics of honour, but a plethora of characters weaving in and out make the play confusing. If that was not enough, some of the characters have such long dialogues (especially Ulysses) that after the first forty minutes into the play you can't be bothered to decipher what each character wants to philosophize about. The quotation also sums up the difficulty a director must face when staging a play like Troilus and Cressida. Even with a good cast, especially, Thersites, Cressida, Ulysses, Pandarus, Agamemnon and an innovative set, the play becomes tedious and provides very little in terms of comic relief. The staging of war scenes at the end does not gel with the rest of the play and seemed unnecessary; so did the playing of loud trumpet intermittently - instead of being comic, it was rather jarring to the senses. Vibha Joshi
|