Troilus and Cressida

This play takes its name from the two self-absorbed lovers who make up the play’s watery B-plot. The real action is with Agamemnon and Priam, leaders of the opposing Greek and Trojan horses forces. Looking back I probably could have found something more compelling than this brooch with what is patently a Roman, rather than a Greek, soldier on it. Meh – they both wore those helmets with the horse hair whisks on top didn’t they? No? OK, here’s my rationalization, which I have totally made up just now – you know how it’s fun to stage Shakespeare’s plays in periods different from both their setting and composition? Right, well, after much beard-stroking rumination, I decided to imagine Troilus and Cressida as though it were set not in ancient Greece, but instead, several hundred year later in ancient Rome. If I set it at an ecstasy rave with Leonardo DiCaprio and Clair Danes as Troilus and Cressida no one would blink an eye, but the minute I mush together ancient Greece and ancient Rome, everybody’s all up in my stuff, blah blah blah. Yes, yes, I know they were different – I just don’t particularly care when it’s August and I’m sweating under halogen lights in my back room trying to photograph the 24th out of 37 cover images. Don’t let the periaktoi hit you on the way out.