Ian Potter, an actor and set designer with Gamut Theatre Group, was somewhat prepared for his role of Achilles in “Troilus and Cressida.”
“I read ‘The Iliad,’ the epic poem attributed to Homer about the Trojan War, in high school,” Potter said. “I was also in a college production of ‘The Trojan Women,’ a tragedy by Greek playwright Euripides.”
The play is the annual outdoor production to be presented this month by the Harrisburg Shakespeare Company, which, together with Popcorn Hat Players Children’s Theatre, comprises Gamut.
Jaded
As usual, the author of “Troilus and Cressida,” William Shakespeare, brings his own take to the ancient conflict.
Now in its seventh year, the war has reached a stalemate. Both sides, Trojans and Greeks alike, are questioning the value of continuing it. Meanwhile, Troilus, the young son of the Trojan House of Priam, and Cressida fall in love.
Only, it isn’t feuds in an Italian city that thwart their romance—as per “Romeo and Juliet”—but political maneuvering. Cressida decides to make alliances that stand to compromise her virtue, explained Gamut Theatre Group’s artistic director, Clark Nicholson, who is staging the production.
When Troilus sees Cressida flirting with a man in the Greek camp to which she has been traded, he considers her a whore, although no one refers to the beautiful Helen of Troy that way because of her social standing.
“Yet, it’s not even clear that Helen minds having been abducted to begin with, though that supposedly started the war,” said Nicholson.
Troilus ends up a “very angry, very jaded young men, who becomes an angry fighter,” Nicholson said. “It’s not unlike a Romeo and Juliet dynamic, in which the two are doomed not to be together.”
“Troilus and Cressida” is one of the Bard’s most enigmatic plays, encompassing both an ancient story—actually one of the oldest extant in Western literature—and modern cynicism. Part of it is drawn from a medieval source, a work by Chaucer about the two lovers.
Variously characterized as a problematic comedy or a tragedy, it is “simultaneously comic, tragic and satiric, offering a chilling twist to the classical mythic heroes of antiquity,” Nicholson said.
Moreover, while the undoing of Troilus and Cressida’s love is at the play’s core, in reality, it accounts for little stage time, which mostly focuses on the leaders of the Greek and Trojan forces.
“The love story bookends the play,” rather than being central to it, noted Nicholson.
Worth Doing
While not one of Shakespeare’s most popular works and not containing the memorable speeches a “Hamlet” does, “Troilus and Cressida” is a “beautiful piece of poetry,” full of metered and rhymed couplets, surrounding an epic adventure. That alone makes the play worth doing,” Nicholson added.
“Troilus and Cressida” is a “very dark look at humanity, with people confusing love and lust and war being based more on covetousness and bragging rights than on honor,” Nicholson continued. “Shakespeare casts a satirical eye on his characters and not the most flattering look at war, although it’s not a wholesale condemnation.”
Other cast members include Jared Calhoun as Troilus and Emily Samuelson as his love interest—both in their Gamut debuts; Amber Mann as Pandarus, the go-between for the lovers; Thomas Weaver as Ulysses; Sean Adams as Hector; Jeffrey Rensch as Agamemnon; Bernard Joseph as Aeneas; and Kathryn Miller as Helen.
The multi-talented Potter also designed the sets, drawing inspiration from photographs of contemporary, war-ravaged Syria.
No Heroes
Nicholson’s locale for the play is not ancient Greece or Troy but the present or not-too-distant future on the eastern side of the Mediterranean. The fighting is carried on by private military units, like Blackwater; each city-state of Greece (as opposed to a united Troy) has a different insignia.
Besides the possible betrayal of Troilus by Cressida (whether to survive or for other reasons), there is a larger one: the leaders have tried to convince their people that the Trojan War was a life-and-death struggle. But it was really an “insult thing,” said Nicholson. “Like Samuel Johnson said, ‘Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel,’ and in that sense, the play is very timely and germane.”
Great playwrights are not about polemics, at least not exclusively.
“Shakespeare is not a pacifist, nor does he take a propaganda point of view—but rather, a realistic one,” Nicholson said. “It’s more like, if someone tells you to kill a man for God, country and apple pie, and you do it, maybe you should have been a little less gullible. Shakespeare asks us to figure out and decide if this is patriotism.”
In order to get Helen back, the Greeks are “willing to topple the city and the ground and loot as much possible,” added Potter. “Maybe that’s why Helen is more an idea, talked about” than active in the play.
For all of its foundation in “The Iliad,” Potter points out that these are not really heroes.
“There’s a lot of deceit and brutality,” he said. “If Shakespeare’s play is not totally anti-war, it does show it’s not a glorious thing and how ugly it can be.”
The great Achilles, for example, no longer wishes to come out of his tent. “He is motivated to do so for personal reasons—when Patroclus (Rose Weber), who may have been his dear friend, family member or lover, is killed by Hector,” said Potter.
In a breach of honor, Achilles then has others kill an unarmed and resting Hector.
Yet, just as Romeo and Juliet fall in love amidst feuding, so do Troilus and Cressida amidst war. Something good may come from something brutal, though not necessarily with happy results, said Nicholson.
Gamut Theatre Group’s Harrisburg Shakespeare Company will perform “Troilus and Cressida” June 5 to 20 at the Levitt Pavilion in Reservoir Park at 7:30 p.m. Admission is free. For information, visit www.gamuttheatre.org or call 717-238-4111.
