Troilus and Cressida (review)

The Stratford Festival's Troilus and Cressida, directed by Richard Monette, plays comically and bitterly with the human predilection for lechery and war. The production links these two Freudian forms of aggressive self-seeking in images of parodic lust and anti-heroic brutality. Monette's style always aims for the high theatrical rather than the intellectually probing, and this production is no exception: it features Paris and Helen's comic carnal love scene; a Pandarus in drag; and a preening, mean-spirited Achilles accompanied by a buff but mincing and mocking Patrocolus. The contrasting worlds of Greek and Trojan are both filled with the lecherous and the proud. The production, taking off from Shakespeare's cynical comic-tragic text, provides the audience with a roguish catalogue of lubricious characters, both wanton sexually and slippery morally. The only redeeming points of light in this darkling portrait of humanity are Troilus and Cressida—played as naive and beautiful by a curly-haired, virile David Snelgrove and a glittering, blond Claire Jullien—and the straight-talking homebody hero Hector—portrayed with a grim gravity by the dark, lank Andy Velasquez. But, in Monette's vision, lechery and war kill any ideals of love or honor.

The Greek camp in this production is the world of male pride, where aggression and self-aggrandizement are the bases of human relations. Costumed in dark, flowing tunics, adorned simply with gold medallions and bands, the Greeks are a dour lot, debating their fortunes and trying to find a way to save face while exiting from a bloody seven-year impasse. Wayne Best's compact, muscular, square-jawed Agamemnon looks a bit like Mussolini and proves as feckless a figurehead, relying on Peter Donaldson's lean, wily, gray-bearded Ulysses to analyze the Greek fiasco and propose a solution full of manipulative guile. Contrasting with the sour, sulky war council is the source of their problem: Jamie Robinson's smiling, mocking Achilles, lounging bare-chested, in his silken happi coat, bedizened with gold-feather earrings and thick gold pendants. Though Achilles is the heroic warrior necessary to battlefield success, Robinson's portrayal turns him into a petulant, pouting rock star—in other words, a male diva. The emblem of self-love in the play, Achilles' homosexual relationship with buff but silly Patrocolus (David Kelly), becomes both destructive, self-indulgent pleasure and the means for putting down the other Greek nobles. Sulking in his tent, this Achilles leaves Patrocolus (clothed only in a bath towel and coyly munching an apple) to mock and humiliate the Greeks seeking his help. In a gratuitous and flagrant gesture, Patrocolus's exit asserts Achilles' place of pride, mocking the Greeks by whipping off his towel and flaunting his male member as he poses before entering the tent to luxuriate with his master.

In a move typical of Monette's directorial choices, this production alludes to contemporary images and styles to enliven Shakespeare's text. If Robinson's Achilles recalls the modern, sarcastic, rock-star anti-hero, Jeffrey Renn's bald, bullet-headed Ajax alludes to the television's bellicose, bellowing wrestling superstars. Ulysses' manipulative positioning of Ajax as the new Greek hero and hope manages to pique Achilles but not bring him out of his tent. The Greeks watch in amused amazement as Ajax warms to his new role. Wearing tight-fitting, black wrestling trunks, Renn's Ajax moves quickly in long, crouching strides, circling the stage as if it were a ring—full of the chest-beating pride so characteristic of our televised grapplers. The production fully limns the cynicism of the text. Neither Robinson's smug, sarcastic Achilles nor Renn's blustering, mindless Ajax serves as a model of the heroic. Rather, these two caustically satiric portrayals use pride to turn prowess to folly.

While the Greeks suffer from corrupted heroic pride (which launched their ships against Troy to recover King Menelaus's trophy wife Helen in the first place), the Trojans suffer from...