Word: troilus
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida," which officially opened the Loeb Drama Center on Saturday evening, is a long, ambiguous, dispirited play that professionals can hardly cope with. It is, I suspect, outside the range of amateurs. Although they can and do go through the motions of telling a story with considerable competence, they cannot endow it with a point of view. Nor can they become classical actors by working hard and willing...
Although "Troilus and Cressida" presents formidable acting problems, it provokes an interesting use of the stage. Stephen Aaron, director, has employed the apron stage with the audience ranged around three sides; and he has designed a performance that is becoming to the play and platform. Todd Lee's setting consists of levels, shapes and areas that culminate in a round peak against a glowing cyclorama; and Walter Benson's lighting plot is superb, indicating the range and richness of the electrical equipment. No doubt it will be years before the staff learns to use the full potential...
...Shakespearean canon, "Troilus and Cressida" comes after "Hamlet" and the powerful tragedies and at a time of the moody, enigmatic comedies that are unresolved and express a general distaste for life. There was a time when pedants were convinced that Shakespeare had suffered a nervous breakdown. Romanticists are sure that the Dark Lady of the Sonnets had betrayed him more wantonly than usual, and that, like Jimmy Durante, he was in a mowing mood...
Today we have to admit that we don't know what happened. But obviously Shakespeare lacked his familiar energy when he wrote "Troilus and Cressida." It is a long, wordy play without much plot, invention or scope. As a portrait of Shakespeare's mind at one period, it is provocative. As drama, it is dull. That is why it is seldom performed...
Some of the characters are played with more enterprise than others. Daniel Seltzer's independent, personable Ulysses, Robert Thurman's willowy, boyish Troilus, William Fitz-Hugh's dim-witted Ajax with his fatuous pride, Alvarez Bulos' slippery Pandarus with oily speech and manners, David Stone's manly Hector, Travis Linn's pious Nestor, Jean Weston's over-wrought, unkempt Cassandra--all have individuality in one degree or another...