'Troilus and Cressida' review — Shakespeare's anti-heroic, satirical war play is formidably bruising

Read our review of Troilus and Cressida, directed by Owen Horsley, now in performances at Shakespeare's Globe to 26 October.

Summary

• Shakespeare's blistering satire centres on the Trojan and Greek camps during the Trojan War
• There are plenty of contemporary parallels in this portrait of testosterone-fuelled conflict
• The story also features a romance between King Priam's son Troilus and prisoner-of-war Cressida
• Samantha Spiro is a standout in the committed cast as a gender-flipped Pandarus

Shakespeare’s Globe has saved the best for last this season, at least as far as the text itself is concerned. I’ve always had a soft spot for the brazen nihilism of Troilus and Cressida, and this anti-heroic play’s embrace of “wars and lechery [where] nothing else holds fashion” certainly chimes with a landscape just now that contains its full share, alas, of both those states of being.

Quite what audiences new to the play will take away from this production by Owen Horsley, here making his Globe debut, is anyone’s guess. You have to admire both the vigour and rigour of an exceptionally committed cast, not least on an opening night in which Storm Amy gathered pace as the show went on. (The ever-resilient British audience, stalwart to the end, stayed the course.)

But for all the performative theatrics, alongside the use of a mobile phone within the action and the sense of some perverse reality show unfolding in front of our eyes, Shakespeare’s depiction of a populace worn out by ceaseless combat flits in and out of focus. Horsley’s judicious cuts to the text keep proceedings from resembling a fusty history lesson, but this play’s singular dark, depraved centre never quite lands.

Our guide to events is Lucy McCormick’s manic, Mad Max-adjacent Thersites, the psychically malformed, outspoken commentator who reels about the stage, as if life itself were one continual bender. We’re seven years into a war prompted back in the day by Paris’s abduction of Helen – a part also taken by the hyper-energetic McCormick, thereby allowing the performer to play both sides of the Greek-Trojan divide. Ryan Dawson Laight’s set makes use of signage and a giant foot, these scenic accoutrements themselves in a state of decay, and the image is of a world on its way out.

While the Trojans seem pumped for combat, “applause” signs accordingly pressed into service, the Greeks allow their own egos to do battle with one another. They’re especially competitive when it comes to the captive Cressida (Charlotte O’Leary), the Trojan who has been the hapless partner of King Priam’s son, Troilus, with whom this faithless heroine shares the play’s title.

Known as one of Shakespeare’s “problem comedies” (Measure for Measure is another), the play is at heart a blistering satire whose own language takes no prisoners – unlike the characters on view. We get a ruthless portrait of testosterone in overdrive, and the scene late on in which Cressida is passed from one captor to another never fails to disturb. In this context Troilus has to work doubly hard to retain focus, and Kasper Hilton-Hille acquits himself very well amongst a true ensemble in which the showier roles exist away from the name parts.

The doubling extends beyond McCormick’s faintly exhausting dual assignments. Jodie McNee makes a contrastingly prim, bespectacled Ulysses, whilst also playing Cassandra, who promises to fill the Trojan’s eyes with “prophetic tears”. Single – and singular – honours go to David Caves as an Achilles who has clearly seen better days and only has eyes for the doomed Patroclus (Tadeo Martinez): the unabashed homoeroticism of their shared love typifies a play that does nothing by halves.

That in itself could be said of the protean Samantha Spiro, who appears now and again as the wizened Nestor but is mostly seen as Cressida’s creepy uncle, Pandarus – or, in this gender-flipped version, aunt. Glimpsed carrying a “war paint” purse and tottering about like a demented Dot Cotton of wartime, Spiro is all cackling, bossy bonhomie, until such time as the high spirits are sinisterly undercut: Eamonn O’Dwyer’s original score helps cue the change in mood.

Indeed, it’s worth the three hours just for the final moment in which Pandarus, in a marked departure from the usual Shakespearean farewell, wishes her diseases upon the audience, if you please. She’s a vector of infection in a formidably bruising play whose lacerations on this occasion don’t cut especially deep.

Troilus and Cressida is at Shakespeare's Globe to 26 October. Book Troilus and Cressida tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

Photo credit: Troilus and Cressida (Photos by Helen Murray)