At Wales Theatre Company |
| Wales theatre Company- Cymbeline , Grand Theatre, Swansea , October 15, 2004 |
| Michael Bogdanov’s Wales Theatre Company starts its ambitious tour of three Shakespeare plays (including a marathon one-day trilogy in Cardiff) at home in Swansea and with a question: why Cymbeline ? The Merchant of Venice and Twelfth Night are familiar favourites but the rambling tale of an ancient British king, a wicked stepmother, a virtuous bride, a duped lover, magic potions, missing families and wild animals is, to say the least, an arcane choice. Except for two factors. First, Milford Haven gets a mention and that has to have some novelty value – and an excuse to let some of the cast use their Welsh accents. Second, real life. For a play that is much about the interplay between reality and pretence, that it can also be seen to be about a matter of some very real-life urgency gives it altogether more relevance – this is, after all, in part about a powerful and sophisticated military power of an expanding empire invading and oppressing a proud but trouiblesome nation with a different culture and a different religion. But in Cymbeline that conquering force is Caesar’s army and the oppressed barbarians are the British: we are the Islam of the Roman world. Bogdanov uses this as the subtext to the tale of two lovers whose marriage is threatened by a lie that she has been unfaithful (emphasising, of course, a theme of deception), though the plot is far more convoluted than a simple love story. So we have the British dressed in clothes that, like the music, are a kind of Celtic-Middle Eastern crossover. Cymbeline himself is a grey-bearded wild-looking bullying leader who hides from the invading Romans by hiding in a hole: the comparison with Sadam could hardly be more explicit. It would be easy to criticise Bogdanov’s spin as opportunist hijacking of Shakespeare but he has in fact chosen a play that, beneath the silliness of the storylines, deals with deceit and power and asks questions about what we can believe and what we can’t – questions that clearly occupy us in that world outside the theatre. It’s a fragile construction, though, and a play that needs as much editing as this has had has, perhaps, less dramatic justification for staging. But the WTC’s production is clear and engaging, with a towering John Labanowski as Cymbeline in a cast that is stronger in its ensemble work. Nicki Rainsford returns as the wicked queen and Keith Woodason makes a nicely obnoxious gigolo but perhaps Lisa Zahra (whose voice seemed weak when I caught the show) and Richard Nichols, capable as both are, haven’t yet quite got the measure of the virtuous Imogen and the comic buffoon Cloten. |
Reviewed by: David Adams |
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