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Shakespeare's 'Troilus' is fascinating, but boring By Bill Varble "Troilus and Cressida" was not performed for 300 years. Now we know why. It seems almost as long as the Trojan War itself. At more than three hours, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's production of William Shakespeare's play about the decade-long siege of Troy by the Greeks sometimes feels like it's happening in real time. Some standout performances, a weirdly modern ethos and great fight scenes aren't quite enough to keep this "Troilus" on track. Troy winds up standing when all the dust settles, and it's no wonder. If these Greeks were Gen. Grant and his army, Atlanta would still be standing, and the Union troops would be wandering around the Chattahoochee. "Troilus and Cressida" is one of Shakespeare's strangest and most difficult plays, a bitter satire that looks like a history, feels like a tragedy and plays like a comedy. It is usually considered a "problem play." The action - what there is of it - starts on the plain of Troy in the middle of the legendary war stemming from the Trojan Paris' kidnapping of the Greek Queen Helen. We pick up two interwoven plots, the warriors' quest for honor, and the Troilus-Cressida love story. Troilus is lovesick, Pandarus is pandering (duh!), and Cressida's father has deserted to the Greeks. Cressida calculates that a girl best gets what she wants by being a tease. Hector is spoiling for a fight. Ajax is a lurching oaf. The great Achilles is lolling about in his tent with boy-toy Patroclus. Helen just wants to have fun. So it goes. This is not your heroic, Homeric Trojan War. It's as if Shakespeare took us through a time warp into a looking-glass war with Francis Ford Coppola, Joseph Heller and Groucho Marx, a dark, hilarious, bitter deconstruction job on war and love. Everything is upside down. Instead of heroes, Trojans and Greeks are bullies and cowards. Instead of romantic lovers, they are lechers and fools. The best characters - the ones that make us laugh - are grotesque. Thersites is a disgusting troll, Pandarus a pimp, Ajax a macho moron. Helen is a wickedly worthless society wastrel. Kevin Kinnerly is painfully self-deluded as the sappy Troilus, although his character was sometimes difficult to distinguish from Segismundo, the prince he plays in "Life is a Dream" (playing in the Angus Bowmer Theatre). James Newcomb, as Thersites, the fool, steals large chunks of the play, acting as a one-man chorus commenting on the action. He is scathing, bitter, cowardly and scurvy and spreads a fine aura of disgust on the other characters and their doings. He repels us and is highly entertaining. Tyler Layton is a lovely Cressida, more feckless than simply faithless. James Peck's churlish Ajax provides comic relief at some otherwise slow moments. Director Kenneth Albers, standing in for William Leach on opening night, is a bright spot. His Pandarus is cynical, smarmy and delightfully corrupt. Fight director John Sipes' sword fights are the visual peak of the play, releasing built-up (for too long) tension and injecting some needed energy. With their flashing swords and tiny shields, actors hack and parry and join each other in stylized dances of death choreographed with clashing sound and light. Shakespeare might have called his satire "All's Foul in Love and War," or maybe "The Decline and Fall of Everybody." If any romantic notions about love or war are standing at the end, it isn't because Shakespeare doesn't eviscerate them and drag them through the dust of our disillusionment. It's amazing how modern the nihilism feels. But for a modern audience, excepting only your hardcore Bard buffs, there are simply too many very long scenes with too many characters standing around for too long making too many very long speeches. The trouble lies with the play. Maybe it would have felt more dynamic, and less opaque, to Elizabethans. They knew the Earl of Essex, whom it may have lampooned, and they identified with Troy, refugees from which founded Britain in legend. But there is for us a strange and ironic contrast between the play's modernist content and its snail-like progression the stage. Would it be sacrilege to consider an edited version, say, two-and-a-half hours? "Troilus and Cressida" is meaty but tough. It speaks to us, if only our attention doesn't flag. We would not want to lose its treasures, or to very often sit through it. Bring a cushion. Reach reporter Bill Varble at 776-4478 or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.