Jennifer Tang’s revival of Shakespeare’s Cymbeline switches the gender of half its main characters. The titular British ruler now becomes Queen Cymbeline who frowns on her daughter Innogen’s relationship with someone not only of lower status but a woman. The scheming stepmother queen is now a Duke (who wants to see his son married to Innogen), Cymbeline’s lost twin boys (now one of each sex) were stolen by a now-female wronged Belaria and in this ancient Britain’s now-matriarchal society, earth goddess Gaia replaces the Jupiter of misogynist Romans.
With a few words regendered, it still fits Shakespeare’s story of skullduggery, a bet on a partner’s faithfulness, cross-dressing disguise and mistaken identity with its contrived fairytale ending and adds an extra dimension with British society opposing Rome’s masculinity.
Designer Basia Biñkowska hides the Wanamaker’s opulent scena under fabric that is scattered with unreal bones (their significance eludes me), and her costumes mix modern with oddity, the Romans distinguished by ultra-long shorts and a dominant claret colour. A central chandelier with a ring of glass surrounding its candles is added to the Jacobean candlelight, and some supplementary electric light breaks with the usual candlelit practice.
Martina Laird’s Queen Cymbeline, who leads her people with sweeping ritual gestures of greeting and worship, suggests a woman of authority now worn by the pressures of sovereignty, but you can’t help wondering why she chose Silas Carson’s scheming Duke as a second husband. Gabrielle Brooks is an excitable teenage Innogen full of fast-talking vitality, not yet wised-up to a wicked world and besotted with a Posthumus (Nadi Kemp-Sayfi) whose heroic demeanour crumbles when she thinks her wife has been unfaithful.
Jordan Mifsúd as Cloten, the Duke’s son, presents him as one of Shakespeare’s clowns with a crazy dance routine, but he is deranged, uncontrolled and dangerous. Iachimo, who bets Posthumus he can make Innogen unfaithful, is irresponsible in a different way: though Pierro Niel-Mee gives a glimpse of an Iago-like schemer, it’s a game to him, he’s not driven by malice however hurtful the results are.
Delivered at speed (though still running at nearly three hours if you include the interval), this is a production that leaves no time to start questioning the improbabilities of a complex plot and it isn’t afraid to get laughs rather than dwell on its dark side. There is sometimes ethereal music by Laura Moody, its strange sounds made by unusual instruments, that fits a play that is a fantasy, not ancient history.