Theatre in Review: Troilus and Cressida (The Public Theater/Delacorte Theater)

	Tala Ashe, Bill Heck. Photo: Joan Marcus

Time and again this summer I have been reminded that age cannot wither nor custom stale William Shakespeare's infinite variety. At his astonishing best, his plays feel as if they were written yesterday, so piercing and timeless are his insights into the ways we humans behave. Whether making love, engaging in intrigue, or unleashing the dogs of war, his characters often cut startlingly contemporary profiles. This is acutely evident at the Delacorte these nights, where Daniel Sullivan's production of Troilus and Cressida clinically probes the damaged souls of men engaged in what Gore Vidal once called "perpetual war for perpetual peace."

Centuries before anyone affixed the word "quagmire" to the American misadventures in Viet Nam and the Middle East, Shakespeare turned his gaze on the Trojan War, a central myth of the Western imagination, thanks to Homer and his epic poem. This play is not about heroes, however; Shakespeare picks up the story seven years after Paris, the Trojan, has abducted Helen, wife of the Greek Menelaus, causing the Greek army to settle in for what appears to be an indefinite siege of Troy. Such concepts as honor and victory have long gone by the boards. As we are told in the prologue, "Like or find fault; do as your pleasures are: Now good or bad, 'tis but the chance of war."

This previous statement is a bit of a hedge; in fact, the bad far outweighs the good. Allies squabble among themselves in camps rank with gossip and mischief. The Greek warrior Achilles refuses to enter the fray, preferring to stay abed, dallying with his lover, Patroclus. Paris' brothers -- most notably Hector -- have grown sick of spilling their fellow citizens' blood. Often in Shakespeare's plays, the heroine's virtue is a matter of deep import; here, the lovers, with the aid of Cressida's uncle, Pandarus, casually arrange a sexual assignation, heedless of the consequences. (Pandarus cheerily interrupts their tryst, hailing them with "How go maidenheads?") Then again, women are treated either as spoils of war or bargaining chips. True, there is Cassandra, who alone among the ladies functions as a kind of independent agent, but, even at the height of furniture-throwing fury, her direst predictions are ignored.

In this toxic stew of boredom, random violence, and lust -- and amid the general disregard for war's victims -- we could be in Fallujah or Aleppo, circa 2016, a point underlined by David Zinn's contemporary military costumes and Mark Menard's sound effects, which rattle the stage with explosions, machine-gun fire, and the roar of planes overhead. "Fools on both sides!" exclaims Pandarus, in what may fairly be called the play's thesis statement. Troilus, the play's nominal hero, sneers, "Let Paris bleed; 'tis but a scar to scorn; Paris is gored with Menelaus' horn." Thersites, the most cynical of the Greeks, notes, "All the argument is a cuckold and a whore; a good quarrel to draw emulous factions and bleed to death upon." The Greek warrior Diomedes, casting a cold eye on Helen, the war's cause, says, "She's bitter to her country: Hear me, Paris/For every false drop in her bawdy veins/A Grecian's life hath sunk; for every scruple/Of her contaminated carrion weight/A Trojan hath been slain." (I don't know if anyone has ever done it, but I suspect an analysis of the text would enumerate more condemnations and expressions of sheer disgust than can be found in all the rest of Shakespeare's canon.) Everywhere you look, energy, any sense of purpose, has run down, leaving behind nothing but querulousness, disbelief, and free-floating malice.

Sullivan's production is particularly impressive since Troilus and Cressida is the most problematic of Shakespeare's problem plays, a disorganized mass of subplots that fail to build dramatically, with the title characters oddly left sidelined; Cressida, in particular, drops out of the play altogether, leaving her more or less forgotten by the final curtain. None of the three previous productions I've seen ever found a plausible dramatic line amid the welter of scenes and characters. Here Sullivan brings a remarkable order and clarity to those cankerous, often confused proceedings; if he can't supply a strong of sense of forward motion, he nevertheless knits the scenes into a starkly powerful vision.

Sullivan has also assembled a superb cast who speak the verse with rare lucidity. Bill Heck's Hector is a formidable soldier sickened by all the blood shed over his brother's sordid affair. ("Let Helen go," he snarls in the presence of Paris.) John Douglas Thompson brings a smart military bearing and eye for manipulation to the role of Agamemnon, especially when conning the not-very-bright Ajax (a well-judged performance by Alex Breaux) into a mano a mano bout with Hector. Corey Stoll's Ulysses is an amoral bureaucrat, capable of murdering a fellow soldier if that's what it takes to get Achilles onto the battlefield. Max Casella's Thersites offers scalding running commentary on his military colleagues. John Glover's Pandarus begins as a merrily intriguing old soul, devolving into a disease-wracked scold.

There are also incisive contributions by Maurice Jones as the cool, overprivileged troublemaker, Paris; Sanjit De Silva, smoothly professional as Aeneas; Tala Ashe, unrecognizable while doubling as a bitter, boozing Helen, and a frantic Andromache, wife of Hector; Nneka Okafor as the outraged Cassandra; and Zach Appelman, implacable as the Greek warrior Diomedes, who comes to claim Cressida for himself. In the title roles, Andrew Burnap and Ismenia Mendes capture the slow unraveling of their characters' defenses and their subsequent romantic delight in each other; Mendes also makes a great deal out of her final scene, in which, handed over to the Greeks and nervously feeling the need for a protector, she plays up to Diomedes, unaware that Troilus is spying on her.

The one possibly discordant note is struck by the Achilles of Louis Cancelmi, who joined the production after previews began, replacing the injured David Harbour. Achilles is supposed to be the greatest of warriors, but Cancelmi brings a kind of street-smart quality that is reminiscent of the young Al Pacino. It's an odd replacement for the conventionally handsome and sonorous-voiced Harbour and it arguably makes too strong a contrast with Heck's straightforward interpretation of Hector, Achilles' chief rival. Still, the performance often works on its own terms, especially in concert with Tom Pecinka's Patroclus, who, in his most telling moment, seethes with jealousy over his lover's marriage to the unseen Polyxena.

This tangle of intrigues, feuds, and jealousies is brought to an abrupt end in the climactic battle sequence, which is notable for its extreme brutality -- thanks to excellent work by the fight directors, Michael Rossmy and Rick Sordelet -- and for the fact that resolves nothing. The final image, of Pandarus, his body covered with sores, casting a malediction on the audience while a soldier mops up the pool of blood left on stage, is a searing summing-up of the futility of war.

Zinn's starkly simple set is dominated by a low-rise wall composed of several revolving panels, covered with red patterned wallpaper on one side and corrugated metal on the other. The sides are lined with blindingly white LED tape; overall, it makes a solid statement about the degradations of war. Robert Wierzel's lighting is especially strong in the battle scenes, cutting through banks of smoke and starkly framing each act of violence. Dan Moses Schreier's music ranges from scathing rock riffs to far-more-ethereal compositions, shifting to suit the action of each scene.

It's not likely that we will get another production of Troilus and Cressida that is this clear about what it wants to say -- or one that is as mordant in saying it. As Oskar Eustis, the Public's artistic director, says in his program notes, this is -- unhappily -- the right time for this play. Guided by Sullivan, his designers, and his superb cast, a difficult, almost impenetrable work has been fashioned into a mirror of our society -- and the reflection is profoundly disturbing. -- David Barbour