Troilus and Cressida review – history repeats as farce in Pythonesque takedown of ancient heroes

Shakespeare’s Globe, LondonAchilles is a slob and Ajax is a meathead in Owen Horsley’s streamlined production, which is bursting with invention and comic inversionsShakespeare’s take on the Iliad is hard to categorise. Set during the doldrums of the Trojan war, seven years in, it speaks of conflict as well as of Troilus and Cressida’s star-crossed love. But is this a history play highlighting the hopelessness of war, or a send-up of Homer’s heroic masculinity with a romance thrown in?No doubt Hamlet’s pontificating Polonius would have a hyphenated answer to the mixing of genres (is this what he meant by a “tragical-historical-pastoral?”). Director Owen Horsley has an answer too: this is satire – if not war-farce – in which the “heroes” of classical antiquity are roundly ridiculous. A giant, Pythonesque foot sits on the stage (great design by Ryan Dawson Laight), to set the tone. Continue reading...

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