Troilus and Cressida
By William Shakespeare
EIF in association with the Royal Shakespeare Company
King's Theatre
****
Peter Stein is now an Edinburgh regular and this year has set himself
a challenge by selecting one of Shakespeare's less popular plays.
Troilus and Cressida is set during the Trojan War following
the abduction of Rachel Pickup's very sexy Helen by Paris (Adam Levy).
This provokes the Greeks to action against their neighbour and as
a result, the title characters become both symbols and political pawns
in what turns into a tragedy for all parties.
With the aid of set and costume designers Ferdinand Wögerbauer
and Anna Maria Heinrich, Stein creates a spectacle that includes a
couple of really breathtaking scenes.
Using a backdrop of burnished metal and predominantly blues and oranges,
a simple set with few props beyond tents and weapons looks good.
The entry of Helen and Paris, flying down, seemingly, from the heavens
on a luscious red bed, very deliberately contrasts their passionate
love with the nervous approaches of their counterparts. Paris' brother
Troilus, played by Henry Pettigrew, seems like a Hamlet figure, a
boy lacking in the confidence to tell pretty Cressida that he loves
her.
Their romance is assisted to consummation by Paul Jesson's long-haired
voyeur, Pandarus. What he gets them into is eternal sorrow, as Cressida,
confidently played by Annabel Scholey, becomes a pawn in the war,
to be exchanged for a Trojan warrior and lost to her love forever.
The final battle, as the backdrop sinks to 45 degrees or so and dry
ice is complemented by shadow, is spectacular and moving as our heroes
are picked off one by one.
For Edinburgh, used to hour-long comedies and mini plays, a 3½
hour play seems impossible. In fact, though some of the politicking
can drag as the lugubrious Greeks led by Ian Hogg's Agamemnon plot,
the tone is generally light.
This in part is a compliment to Ian Hughes, fast becoming one of
our finest Shakespearean clowns. He is Thersites, a man who transfers
his Foolish allegiances conveniently to ensure that his comic skills
are on show as much as possible.
Stein has a big reputation and while Troilus and Cressida
may not see him at his very best, the ingenuity that he demonstrates
again and again ensures that what might have been a chore turns into
a worthwhile evening.
Philip Fisher
The Lindbergh Flight/The
Flight Over the Ocean
The Seven Deadly Sins
Music by Kurt Weill, text from Bertolt Brecht
Festival Theatre
*****
This double bill of almost operas is a two-hour delight with its
mix of music, singing and movement combining with the great vision
of director François Girard to provide a memorable evening.
The Lindbergh Flight/The Flight Over the Ocean
This cantata tells the tale of the first man to fly solo across the
Atlantic. From the mouth of American-accented Don McKellar's Speaker
who links the fifteen parts, the audience also learns about the playwright
Bertolt Brecht who wrote the text, which is sung in German.
The prologue also allows Brecht both to eulogise the flyer-hero and
point out that years later, he aided Hitler's Germany to perfect bombers
used in World War II.
Visually, this piece is stunning with a large backdrop giving a feel
of what Lindbergh must have gone through, slowly crossing a map from
the USA to Europe, and suspended over the stage is a mock-up of The
Spirit of St Louis. The sea is quietly calming but when fog starts
to billow in towards the audience, Lindbergh's experience becomes
truly terrifying.
By the end, Charles Workman, while still singing powerfully, conveys
the flagging tiredness of a hero who has managed what many had believed
to be impossible.
He is supported by a twenty-strong chorus, divided into four teams,
two of each gender, who operate in different combinations and also
provide soloists.
The Seven Deadly Sins
This sexiest of works is described as a Ballet Chanté
in eight parts. Brecht has transferred the old, old story to America
where we see two Annas, sisters who are psychologically opposite sides
of the same coin, as they travel across the continent from Louisiana.
Their goal is simple, they are working for the Yankee dollar, symbolised
by a giant banknote suspended behind a grid of the United States throughout.
With her scarlet hair, Gun-Brit Barkman as Anna I looks like Franka
Potente in cult movie Run Lola Run. She sings like a mischievous
angel and is the constant that keeps the piece together as her sister
Anna II in seven different incarnations succumbs to all of the temptations
that 1930s USA had to offer, as she attempts to secure the family's
future.
The choreography makes or breaks this ballet and is adventurous.
The eight-strong male dance team specialises in breakdance, which
is unusua,l to say the least in a production billed as opera, and
supported by a four-man operatic chorus, having fun while suspended
above the stage.
The Anna IIs dance the sins using styles varying from the balletic
to lap-dance, boxing and moonwalk!
Somehow it comes off and provides an exciting hour leading up to
an epilogue in which Anna can settle back at home and enjoy the riches
that her sins have brought her.
These two pieces work well and combine subtly as Lindbergh's ticker
tape welcome littered on stage becomes the Capitalist cash that Anna
yearns in America.
The pairing with its view of the mythification of man and Brechtian
attack on the values in the States in the inter-war years has far
too short a run but those lucky enough to see it will undoubtedly
have enjoyed the experience as an enthusiastic and very long curtain
call proves.
Philip Fisher
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