And at that time bequeath you my diseases… the 1981 BBC Shakespeare Troilus and Cressida.
This play has always fascinated me. It’s so deliciously bitter and cynical, so relentless corrosive. I imagine it as the work of an aging Shakespeare making a very deliberate attempt to vandalise Romeo and Juliet. While R&J fails certain Aristotelian definitions of a tragedy insofar as the principals perish for purely circumstantial reasons rather than because of any hamartia or hubris (the Italian post office is to blame), in Troilus and Cressida Cressida falls for no clear circumstantial reasons at all, but rather because of a mysterious compulsion to live up to her name.
Troilus and Cressida is an etymological tragedy. Everybody knows what a pandar is and everybody knows that a Cressid is always “false”. Their ends are in their beginning. Unlike his great source Chaucer, however, Shakespeare does not have an intrusive narrative voice talking us through things, trying to make sense of it all. Instead he has Pandarus and Thersites on the Trojan and Greek sides respectively.
All productions of Troilus and Cressida have to compete with my memory of the majestic 1985 production of the play. They compete and they fail. Here’s a link to my memory of that production…
As memorable a Shakespeare staging as I’ve ever seen. RSC’s Troilus and Cressida 1985
Oddly enough, both this Jonathan Miller directed 1981 television version and the 1985 Howard Davies stage version that I remember so fondly both starred Anton Lesser as Troilus. (Incidentally, can anyone think of another well known actor who is so much thinner than they were 30 years ago?)
Lesser’s Troilus is much younger than any of the other warriors on either side of this conflict. He’s also much shorter, and is shot in such a way as to make his diminutive stature more glaring. He’s a boy in a man’s world, but this world is not worth growing up in.
Suzanne Burden takes a while to convince as Cressida. She seems to lack the comic timing and the maturity you’d want from the role, and which is necessary in order to give her sudden desire to kiss Greeks any hint of plausibility. She even manages to smudge the “An’t had been a green hair, I should have laughed too” line which is one of the best punchlines in Shakespeare. Burden does, however, excel in a state of extremity, when overwhelmed by sorrow and despair.
This production is replete with familiar faces. Tony Steedman is Aeneas – best known as So-Crates from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. The casting of Steedman is crafty, insofar as it messes very deliberately with what we think we know of Troy and its aftermath. Miller astutely interprets the play as Shakespeare’s attempt to mess with what we think we know about these characters. The white haired Steedman is far too inspire a post-Trojan epic by Virgil – far too old to found a new dynasty. But then, people shouldn’t be quoting Aristotle centuries before he was born. And Achilles should be fighting Hector in hand to hand combat instead of…
Esmond Knight, Olivier’s Fluellen, is a very very frail Priam, old enough to be father to warriors who are already too old to fight. The incomparable John Shrapnell is here to show us a version of honourable sanity. Then there’s The Incredible Orlando, a fave performer of Derek Jarman and perhaps the definitive Caliban, as Thersites – the consummate railler. Initially he’s in drag – apparently as a nod to Corporal Klinger from MASH. At times, however, he seems a bit rushed and doesn’t seem to have been afforded enough time to really enjoy his raillery. Unforgivably, Thersites’ extended description of Menelaus – the finest extended insult in all of Shakespeare – is truncated in this production.
Benjamin Whitrow is treated as a very privileged role in this production as Ulysses. His longer orations are often treated to long slow zoom shots – as though to (over) establish the fact that somebody very important is saying something very important. Whitrow could have established his authority without this assistance, and the overall effect is a bit cloying.
Veteran Angry Young Man Kenneth Haigh is memorable chiefly for the calm way in which he, as Achilles, orders his Myrmidon thugs to club unarmed Hector to death.
In short, this production is full of small delights and memorable performances and if the whole leaves you feeling slightly unsatisfied – well then – that’s in the nature of the play – a play which does not build towards a definite climax and most definitely does not leave you with any cathartic sense that passions have been spent in a salutary fashion. Nobody’s learned anything. What do we take home from us? Pandarus’ diseases.
Ah, Pandarus. Pandarus can be either be played as a weirdo who “likes to watch” or as a supreme idealist. Or both. Pandarus believes in “Troilus and Cressida” more than either Troilus or Cressida believe in each other or themselves. He is someone passionate about living and loving vicariously. He is Troilus and he is Cressida within his own virtual reality. He occupies a role in this play very similar to that occupied by the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet and whoever is playing Pandarus steals his show perhaps as often as Nurse steals the Verona play.
In 1985, Clive Merrison persuaded me that Pandarus only needed three or four extra scenes to qualify him as one of the great Shakespearean roles. Charles Gray likewise (but not quite likewise) dominates much of the first half of this play. He is also here the campest thing in the history of the world, ever. The campest of Blofelds (Diamonds are Forever 1971), Gray is perhaps best known as the narrator of the movie version of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. These performances, however, pale into beige heteronormativity compared to his hilariously mannered gesticulations displayed in this Jonathan Miller production of Troilus and Cressida. He is rather less convincing, I think as a Pandarus in despair, a Pandarus pleading for the persistence of love… Gray’s huge bulk working against him to some extent.
The cast are kitted out in Renaissance dress against a vaguely classical background. The Greeks inhabit a muddy field full of tents. Preliminary sketches for a giant wooden horse can be seen in the background. There is very little here to distract from the performances. Among the battle noises you can hear cannon roar – cannon that render Homeric speeches and Homeric hand to hand combat utterly redundant.
The love between Romeo and Juliet can end a gang war. The love between Troilus and Cressida can do nothing in the context of a real war. Pandarus, Troilus, and Cressida are the original three little people who don’t amount to a hill of beans in a crazy world.
I’ve some thoughts about other BBC Shakespeare productions.
Like
Merchant of Venice:
Merry Wives of Windsor:
Pericles:
Twelfth Night:
https://conradbrunstrom.wordpress.com/2017/12/15/poor-monster-the-1980-bbc-twelfth-night/
Othello:
https://conradbrunstrom.wordpress.com/2017/12/07/haply-for-i-am-welsh-the-1981-bbc-othello/
Measure for Measure:
Henry VIII
https://conradbrunstrom.wordpress.com/2017/10/20/its-not-really-about-henry-the-1979-bbc-henry-viii/
Love’s Labours Lost:
Romeo and Juliet:
The Scottish One:
Much Ado About Nothing:
King Lear:
Here is Midsummer Night’s Dream:
Here’s Julius Caesar:
King John:
Here’s Richard II:
The BBC Richard III could not be more unlike the BBC Richard II…
Here is Henry VI Part III
Henry VI. Part Two:
https://conradbrunstrom.wordpress.com/2017/05/14/getting-better-all-the-time-and-incidentally-much-worse-the-1980s-bbc-henry-vi-part-ii/
Henry VI, Part One:
Here’s my review of the BBC Henry V:
BBC Henry IV, Part TWO:
But here’s my review of the BBC Henry IV Part ONE:
https://conradbrunstrom.wordpress.com/2017/03/28/the-1979-bbc-version-of-henry-iv-part-i/
And the BBC Antony and Cleopatra:
Cymbeline:
Not to mention a sombre but intensely homoerotic Coriolanus:
https://conradbrunstrom.wordpress.com/2017/02/10/i-banish-you-the-1980s-bbc-coriolanus/
Here’s Comedy of Errors:
And… All’s Well That End’s Well:
Helen Mirren in the BBC As You Like It:
conradbrunstrom 