Troilus and Cressida @ Bard on the Beach

I have to admit I was looking forward to seeing this. Troilus and Cressida is hardly ever produced, I had never read it in any of the Shakespearean classes I’d taken and it is widely considered one of Shakespeare’s most problematic plays. In fact, for over a century it was never performed at all.

The Studio Stage has an interesting rendition as they’ve chosen a civil war period to stage the production on a thrust stage. The Southern accents took a little getting used to (in fact, I heard a snooty British couple seated next to us complain on the way out at intermission) and it was a bit of a stretch (even for me who I think is a little more informed about the Iliad than most) to keep all the characters straight but the play really does manage to come off.

The interesting (and problematic) part of the play is that Shakespeare chose a medieval story about two lovers torn asunder by a prisoner exchange and then having the woman turn to the arms of one of her captors and put it alongside the political machinations and stalemated battle of Troy and all the characters therein. Depending on who you ask it is a tale of thwarted ambitions but for me, the far more interesting thing is the situation where two nations are entrenched in a war where the sides remember why it started but both are fighting for the symbolic resemblance of the original transgression and slogging it out even though the real point of the war is long past contention.

The really interesting part is how the war is driven by the personalities of those involved and even the petty lowly machinations of each side in trying to gain a slightly upper hand. Ulysses for instance, comes off as a petty ,vile, Machiavellian schemer in this play. Manipulating Ajax to shame Achilles into taking the field to fight for the Greeks.

A particularly poignant play considering the current situation in Iraq (WMDs anyone ?) at the moment.