The Bard’s weirdest play gets a makeover
Cymbeline (Sam Wanamaker Playhouse) Verdict: Spirited stab at an oddity
CYMBELINE is one of Shakespeare’s trickier plays. The heroine clasps a headless corpse to her bosom. How do you stage that? Jupiter descends from on high to give a speech.
This is a challenge not only for the director but also theatregoers, who must somehow not scoff. The play ends with a denouement lasting half an hour, each onionskin of disclosure (already known to the audience) demanding fresh expression of wonderment from the cast. How can you twist your chops into a ‘well I never!’ for the 20th time in succession?
Sam yates’s spirited production at the Globe’s candlelit studio, which I belatedly caught this week, mines this ‘tragedy’ (as it was originally) for ironic laughs.
Jupiter, for instance, is played by a Britannia-chested Pauline McLynn, dangling from the rafters. The final scene becomes a riot of campery, the players almost cooing and slapping their brows with astonishment. This is all thoroughly enjoyable but are we laughing with Shakespeare or at him?
Amid a gifted, strongly Irish cast, Emily Barber shines as King Cymbeline’s daughter Innogen (sometimes spelt Imogen). What a lovely performance she gives, touchingly in love with mistrustful Posthumus (Jonjo o’Neill, who speaks Shakespeare as well as anyone in London), and plausible both as a beautiful princess and in disguise as a boy. Great things surely await Miss Barber.
Miss McLynn does the Queen almost as a pantomime baddie. Christopher Logan’s physician Cornelius is so mincing and delicate he could be related to Niles Crane, brother of TV’s Frasier.
The Wanamaker, like its parent venue, is an ersatz medieval joint with unyielding bench seats.
yet here we have not only colourblind casting but also use of dry ice to create the smoke of battle. If they are going to employ such modern concepts, how about comfier seating?