Like many of Shakespeare’s deeper cuts, Troilus and Cressida is a bizarre (bordering on broken) play that is clearly only performed (sporadically) in the twenty-first century because of who its author is.
I don’t think that makes it bad, just weird. It’s handy to appreciate the historical context of Shakespeare’s cynical remix of the Iliad. The late Elizabethans really dug the Trojan War. And they also dug the tale of Troilus and Cressida, a tragic love story set during said conflict that was invented in mediaeval times that has now basically faded into obscurity bar this one play.
So while to us it seems peculiar that Shakespeare wrote a drama that combined the familiar story of the Trojan War with an unresolved love story about two randoms, a theatregoer in 1602 would totally get it.
It’s still weird though. I don’t think the traditions of the day forced Shakespeare to make the Greeks such dicks, or to write it as a semi-dark comedy. Owen Horsley’s production leans vigorously into all that to turn the whole thing into something that resembles a demented reality TV show, as Achilles’s dishevelled, dishonourable Greeks square up to Hector’s slick tracksuit-clad Trojans.
Sometimes it’s hard to follow every idea Horsley throws in, and in particular it feels difficult to work out to what extent the war is ‘real’ or not (a scene in which Oliver Alvin-Wilson’s Hector is surrounded by soldiers dressed as Globe stewards wearing Helen of Troy masks is visually arresting but I’m not 100% sure on what it means).
Nonetheless, it’s unquestionable that there is a conflict. And Horsley has tremendous fun with his eccentric Greeks - David Caves’s boorish, overweight Achilles dominates, but a kohl-eyed and feral Lucy McCormick is typically arresting as Thersistes. Samantha Spiro meanwhile, is great fun in a virtual cameo as a decrepit, wheelchair-bound Nestor, and Jodie McNee is excellent as an understatedly sinister Ulysses. Actually amping up Shakespeare’s negativity towards the Greeks, here McNee’s cunning general goes to shockingly vicious measures to manipulate the conflict out of its deadlock.
The Trojans, meanwhile, are slick and largely honourable, but with a spiritual malaise that feels like it proves their undoing – the beginning of the end for them here seems like it’s triggered by junior Trojan prince Troilus (Kasper Hilton-Hille) callously agreeing to give his newfound love Cressida (Charlotte O’Leary) away to the Greeks in a prisoner exchange.
A lot of Kneehigh-style goofing helps the convoluted plotting go down: in her ‘main’ role, Spiro nearly steals the show as an overbearing auntie take on Trojan warrior Pandarus, and the production’s single funniest moment comes when Paris clashes with his archrival Meneleus: a particularly chaotic fight as both roles are played by Matthew Spencer.
May the gods help you if this is your first Shakespeare play, or you’re unfamiliar with the basic plot outline of the Iliad. But if you’re prepared to meet Troilus and Cressida halfway – and to be clear, you’re not likely to it done again for at least another decade – then Horsley’s production is rewarding, an engaging mix of jet-black cynicism and unfettered silliness.
