play review

existentialgoat and I went to see Troilus and Cressida last night. Things looked rather ominous when the director's note announced that he had picked the play after looking around for a good vehicle to talk about war and the human cost of war, and that he had found this play to be good for cutting and rearranging in order to make his point. It turned out to be less anvilicious than it promised, however. Or rather, the anviliciousness was sufficiently confused that it didn't get in the way. Coming from someone who has not actually read the play thoroughly all the way through -- there were some rather large omissions (apart from line and speech cutting): most notably, Diomedes was merged with Ajax: it was played as "Cressida is forced by a brutish Ajax to accept him as her lover." This is a more congenial interpretation, I think, than the traditional(?) "Cressida is just a flighty woman who falls for whatever pretty man happens to be available," and it sort of mostly worked. Thersites was made into a female slave, which stretched some of the lines, obviously, but, again, worked about half the time.

Um what else? It was modern dress, naturally. There were some really nicely-done scenes of Hector, Aeneas, Troilus, etc. engaging in band of brothers-esque cameraderie, helping each other off with armour, passing around cards and beers, etc. Probably the worst scene was the version of the Agamemnon (played by a woman), Nestor, and Ulysses in council: it consisted of them sitting on stage watching the previously-filmed version of them giving their speeches. Also, they cut out the complaint about how Achilles and Patroclus sit around doing impressions of the more senior officers, which is my favorite part of that scene.

I imagine that making Pandarus Troilus' Gay Best Friend must be a fairly common way to go, but that gives the ending some awkward implications if it's played completely casually as "oh shoot, I have a fatal sexually-transmitted disease." Just an FYI.

Unrelated to that: I am a total Aeneas fangirl in this play, and I don't know why. But I really like him (I remember this from reading the play, too).