Cymbeline

The last time we saw Kneehigh Theatre Company*, there was partial nudity, trapezes, cross dressing, and fake vodka thrown over the front row of the audience. It’s fair to say that they’re known for their ‘off the wall’ approach.

So I wasn’t sure what to expect of their production of Cymbeline, a play which, it must be said, is proof of the saying that even Will had his off days.

It had only a nodding acquaintance with Shakespeare’s play, being almost entirely re-written, though keeping to the story, of a family separated and re-united, parents and children and loss and reconciliation.

Cymbeline has one of the most convoluted plots in the canon – you just try and explain it to someone, as I did, and you’ll soon find yourself in knots. It’s a mish-mash of themes from other, and greater, plays. A bit of Othello, a bit of ‘As You’, a bit of the Roman plays, it’s sort of pastoral, historical, comical, fantastical.

If I had to sum up the production, I would say it was above all ‘theatrical’. What does that mean? Well to me it meant using all sorts of theatre techniques to get the story across. Music, dramatic effects (the battle played out with toy soldiers being a particular highlight), effective use of a metal cage structure as the principal set, which the characters broke out of when they left Britain, which could be climbed on, opened out and used to separate people from each other. The presentation of the lost boys as living rough. So much can be achieved with so little. In many ways, perhaps the Quarry Theatre was too big a space for it, and I can imagine that it would have been even more effective in the Swan Theatre at Stratford.

Funniest bits. ‘Milford Haven…where’s Milford Haven?...It’s in WALES! A wonderful slimy Iachmio (nice body, shame about the face).

Occasionally, a sudden burst of Shakespeare’s words would catch me unawares, and the poetry would break over the audience, making me almost catch my breath at its beauty. ‘Hang there, like fruit, my soul, till the tree dies’. ‘Fear no more the heat o’ the sun’.

Let’s be honest, it’s a play not many would choose to go and see, but the theatre was packed. If it couldn’t actually claim to be ‘by William Shakespeare’ then maybe it sent some of this audience out realising that Shakespeare can be enjoyable, and with more understanding of how his plays might have been received at the time that they were written. He wasn’t writing for posterity, he was a jobbing playwright, turning out a play to make money, though, I’m not sure that the original Cymbeline would have made him much.

*they’re based in Truro, y’know, home of the largest Marks and Spencers in the whole of Cornwall.