It’s not just the Trojans and Greeks who go head to head in this high concept Shakespeare production. The Royal Shakespeare Company (The Greeks) face off against New York’s The Wooster Group (The Trojans), to see who can best re-interpret a pretty tricky play. Having rehearsed all their scenes separately, the two casts only had a few weeks to combine the two different visions of their directors. Would this be an exciting theatrical mash-up or an ungainly mush with too many cooks spoiling the plot?
The story is simple – the Greeks have besieged Troy for seven years to try and win back Helen from her abductor Paris. Both armies are weary, the Greeks beset by infighting, the Trojans reduced to wondering if one woman is worth the deaths of so many. Troilus and Cressida, like other Shakespearean lovers, court each other in the middle of a bitter war.
The Wooster Group’s Trojans are a high-tech tribe – inspired by Native-American and Innuit peoples, yet radio mic’d and wearing ear pieces. They speak in the rhythms of those tribes. They often watch and mimic the movements of other actors in films shown above them on video monitors.
What you can’t hear is that through their earpieces, each member of the Wooster Group is also listening to the voice of a character on the video screens, saying the lines from the movie playing above. Director Elizabeth LeCompte’s aim is to prevent an overly emotional performance, by getting the actor to focus on a series of ‘tasks’ while saying the lines.
All this mediation should be very distracting but it kind of works. Just as you’re used to the relaxed tones and soft dance-like movements of the American actors the wall revolves and the RSC burst out on stage in laddish form, bellowing their triumphant arrival as the Greeks – no mics in this tribe. Where the Trojans are a sympathetic community, the Greeks are a collection of larger than life individuals with massive egos – Achilles (Joe Dixon) is a ripped, gay prize fighter who refuses to come out of his tent and his fool, Thersites, a caustic drag queen in a wheelchair, (an impressive Zubin Varla). It’s hard to pick out actors in this resolutely ensemble piece. But, as Ulysses, Scott Handy’s verse speaking is just beautiful - luminous and clear.
With Shakespeare it’s all about the language. It’s beautiful and dense, full of metaphors that unfold and then turn back on themselves, foxing the listener with a dazzling maze of imagery, of arguments and counter arguments about love, war, vanity and courage. There are no victors in this war seems to be the message.
When the two tribes meet there are some surreal moments as two very colourful design concepts clash. But it’s this surprising collision of ideas that makes for a very enjoyable night.