tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4481691725314537521.post5166534113413910923..comments2023-09-20T14:34:21.102+02:00Comments on Postcards from the Gods: Troilus and Cressida - BarbicanAndrew Haydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05568061302451610140noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4481691725314537521.post-2816739793599739162008-06-04T15:46:00.000+02:002008-06-04T15:46:00.000+02:00Totally agree. I may have my cloth-eared moments, ...Totally agree. I may have my cloth-eared moments, but this was ridiculous. Not content with covering the stage with canvas, they also seemed to be speaking to it, and what I could hear of the first half sounded like they were struggling with the language.<BR/><BR/>It seemed to me that there was a deliberate choice to show everyone at their worst (except Thersites, who is almost charming), far more than is called for in the text. Doing this to characters so well known and loved in the wider literature of the Trojan wars is a dangerous move, but might have worked if the production had had other strengths. A couple of good set-pieces do not compensate, and the epilogue was totally inaudible, making the whole thing pointless.<BR/><BR/>Sorry to go on, the more I think about it, the worse it gets! I actually wrote to the Barbican about the sound problems.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4481691725314537521.post-86039454225802963282008-06-02T13:26:00.000+02:002008-06-02T13:26:00.000+02:00Interesting. Although in the context of the Shake...Interesting. Although in the context of the Shakespeare, like with Marlowe's Edward II and S's own R. II, isn't the homosexuality rather more problematised in the Greek camp? <BR/><BR/>I didn't subscribe for a moment to Billington's view that Ulysses is meant to be repressedly lusting after Troilus (it looked like he was just trying to stop him starting a fight, not having a closeted touch-up). The Greeks seem to take pretty great exception to Achilles and Patroclus in T&C, don't they? Irrespective of historical Greek practices and Elizabethan hypocrisy, aren't the Greeks here meant to be Pretty Straight Guys with Ulysses being a heterosexually unfaithful husband (The Odyssey) and Menelaus pretty keen to get his wife back. While Agamemnon's rape of Cassandra is pretty much his undoing elsewhere. <BR/><BR/>Think Donnellan's classical education rather got the better of him at the expense of the play here.Andrew Haydonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05568061302451610140noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4481691725314537521.post-76523932836089763592008-06-02T12:46:00.000+02:002008-06-02T12:46:00.000+02:00The FT rewrote one of my lines in fear of its inte...The FT rewrote one of my lines in fear of its international readership. I wrote: 'The warlords of both sides then begin waltzing together, which again may say something about masculine martial camaraderie but strikes me as a little *too* "Greek" in the circumstances.' This got changed to "too camp", alas.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com