It’s less Shakespeare, more Ab Fab
THERE is a frantic fashion for gender- swapping in Shakespeare.
The Royal Shakespeare Company joins it by turning the peculiar story of King Cymbeline into one in which Cymbeline is a Queen, dressed in Ugg boots.
There is almost as much of director Melly Still as of W. Shakespeare. That might not matter were the show voicing a clear, surprising message. Instead, the whole thing is a bit of a multicultural mess.
Ancient Britain (cue world music, some didgeridoo and mixed-race casting) is under the cosh from imperial Rome. The empire is demanding annual payments. The show’s programme contains an essay about the EU referendum and there was internet chat from early previews about the EU flag fluttering over the stage, but at Monday’s final preview this touch had disappeared.
Yet there is still a frisson of topicality as Britons shout to one another to ‘stand, stand and fight!’ the foreign power.
Gillian Bevan’s Cymbeline strides about the place like a character from Absolutely Fabulous. Cymbeline’s consort, usually an untrustworthy stepmother, has become a duke (James Clyde). Various other parts have had their gen- der altered. Dimwit Cloten has his head chopped off by a longlost princess rather than a longlost prince – more a Zara Phillips than a Duchess of Cambridge, plainly.
The central character of Innogen remains unchanged and is played with fey tenderness by Bethan Cullinane.
The most successful scene is the bedroom moment when intruder Iachimo (Oliver Johnstone) spies on her heaving bosom. Shakespeare’s verse is here allowed to rule unchallenged by visual stunts.
Anna Fleischle’s design positions two swivelling gates at the back of the stage and a central pit of mud. A grave? A ditch? Elsewhere we have Banksy murals, a Dad’s Army map and surtitles while characters speak Italian and Latin. Theatregoers seated near me grumbled about the surtitles ( hard to see) and there was much interval muttering about volume levels, particularly about Hiran Abeysekera’s Posthumus.
I was going to come over all tolerant and give the show three stars, but when paper cutouts of little humanoids started fluttering down from above, and when Cymbeline was raped in the battle scene, I’m afraid my patience snapped.