Troilus and Cressida by William Shakespeare
Directed By Zoe Rhodes

Troilus and Cressida, Shakespeare’s epic of the siege of Troy, is a challenge for any company.  Unlike Chaucer’s version, which focuses in on the star-crossed lovers, Shakespeare takes on the entire political and military landscape both inside and outside the city.  In Zoe Rhodes’ recent production for KDC, the legendary conflict was brought into sharp focus on the tiny Landor stage.

Rhodes’ version located the aesthetic, honour-obsessed Trojans as an Oriental culture, complete with Japanese tea ceremony and samurai swords.  The more pragmatic, scheming Greeks were dressed in Western garb.  Perhaps even more significantly, the Trojans were all female and the Greeks all male.  This bold decision worked well in the political and battle scenes, but had the effect of making the central love story rather bloodless.  Helen Laurence’s Troilus suffered movingly, and Alix Hearn was witty and pretty as Cressida, but as a couple they didn’t convince.  As soon as Luke Simonds powerfully sinister Diomedes appeared on the scene, one couldn’t really blame Cressida for ditching Troilus for a real man.  Fiona England rose well to the challenge of Pandarus, playing legend’s most famous pimp as a gossipy aunt.

The lovers’ story becomes sidelined as the play goes on.  After Cressida is taken to the Greek camp, Shakespeare chooses not to show Diomedes’ wooing of her and her gradual weakening.  Meanwhile, the conflict is hotting up, both between opposing sides and within the Greek camp itself.  Cressida’s betrayal of Troilus seems to be only one symptom of a growing age of cynicism as we witness the death of honour and the emergence of politics.

As Hector, Katrina Mallon lived up to the name, scaring off her opponents with a fiery performance.  The play’s most truly tragic hero, Hector wisely counsels giving up Helen, but is persuaded otherwise by Troilus.  Hector fights honourably until he is murdered by Achilles’ gang, unarmed - the price for trying to play the game of war by the rules.

We see the failure of honour and idealism at every turn. Rhodes maximises the strutting, fretting and posing carried out centre stage by the warriors on both sides, indicating that the most intelligent people prefer to operate from backstage or behind the scenes.  Attention gradually shifts from the tragic heroes and heroines to the pragmatic survivors.

One such character is Thersites, played by Piers Burnell as a sex-obsessed snooper who provides some of the play’s funniest moments.  He avoids certain death at Hector’s hands by cheerfully claiming that he is a filthy rogue.  A truly baffled Hector leaves him to it and goes on to battle and his own destruction.  Burnell played Thersites with great energy and commitment, and well deserved the many laughs he got with his portrayal of the “whoreson cur”.

Thersites’ upper class equivalent (as well as more than a suggestion of Tony Blair) is to be found in George Ornbo’s intelligent, plausible Ulysses, who never dirties his hands with actual fighting.  As his cronies don their camouflage gear for the play’s final battle, Ulysees remains on the sidelines of history, reading patiently and biding his time.   And, no doubt, scheming about wooden horses…

Polly Young had one scene only to strut her stuff as Helen of Troy, the face that launched a thousand ships.  Her portrayal of the femme fatale as a vacuous, giggling blonde underlined the tragically trivial excuse for an extended conflict which claimed the lives of thousands.

Troilus and Cressida boasts an extraordinarily stellar cast - almost every character is the hero of a set of myths in their own right.  Achilles, Aeneas, Ajax, Andromache, Agamemnon and Cassandra are just some of the famous names who appear in supporting roles.  Fittingly, this was a truly ensemble production, with strong performances from the entire cast, even those who were struggling with unsuitable roles.  The company extracted maximum humour and impact from Shakespeare’s critique of misguided codes of “honour” which lead to pointless slaughter.  Rhodes’ choice of music for the curtain call said it all  – war.  What is it good for?  Absolutely nothing.

For womanish it is to be from thence

Seven years of indecisive war. Factions, infighting and skulduggery rive both Trojan and Greek sides. Honour and reputation tie them to the fight.

In a world where men call the shots, women clamour for their voices to be heard. Love is a war-aim; sex a commodity. Femininity is the counter-attack that they possess. Romance doesn't stand a chance.

In this darkly modern twist on the battle of the sexes, an all-female Trojan cast tackles the men of Greece on their eternal love affair with war, women and weapons. Remember, it's not the winning that counts

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