Shakespeare Globe

Troilus & Cressida

by William Shakespeare

Production now closed

**** 'Dunster's inventive production keeps surprising you by the way it continually cuts through the play's nihilism with shafts of strong and strange emotion... Matthew Kelly's fine turn as the bawd Pandarus' Time Out

**** 'Shakespeare tragedy is a triumph... A witty take on one of the Bard’s most ­neglected works' thelondonpaper

'The Globe has had a strong season, and Matthew Dunster's intelligent production continues the trend... Plays very well on the self-consciousness of men at war' The Guardian

'Scheming yet comic, macho yet dainty... Troilus doesn't get much better than this' Daily Mail

'Matthew Dunster's fine Globe production... The enthusiastic love of Paul Stocker's troubled Troilus and Laura Pyper's sweetly determined Cressida is positive and refreshing' The Independent

'A lively interpretation brings Shakespeare’s drama vividly into our morally muddled world... There is brio among the acting, notably Chinna Wodu as a thuggish Ajax, Trystan Gravelle’s effete Achilles and Christopher Colquhoun’s ill-fated Hector' The Times

'The best performance comes from Matthew Kelly who plays Pandarus... Chinna Wodu is a hilariously vain Ajax, Trystan Gravelle a charismatic Achilles while Paul Hunter proves memorably disconcerting as the scurrilous Thersites' Daily Telegraph

'Emphatic performances... Laura Pyper is excellent... A challenging but fascinating piece' Metro

'The air of seediness suggests that the young lovers are doomed from the outset, as does the fact that they are brought together by Matthew Kelly’s slick, pliant Pandarus. And in a revealing moment, the production plays their tender prelude to lovemaking as a backdrop to the transaction in the Greek camp that will destroy their affair' Financial Times

A war caused by one love affair destroys another.
Seven years have passed since the Greeks first began their siege of Troy to recapture Helen, and on the Trojan side of the walls the beautiful Cressida, aided and abetted by her hilariously intriguing uncle Pandarus, has embarked upon a passionate love affair with Prince Troilus. When Cressida is forced to join her treacherous father in the Greek camp, can their love survive a difficult separation or will it join the other casualties of war?

Shakespeare fills his ancient tale with savage comedy, great passion, vivid characters and all the heat and sweat of a long and painful campaign. He seems never more modern than in dealing with the subject of a tragic love pursued in the midst of a pointless war.

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