Summary 
Grim, violent condemnation of war amid a large cast of characters and a multitude of complex conflicts. Disease, lust and disloyalty surround the tragedy of Romeo-like Troilus becoming vengeful like Hamlet.
Design
Directed by Barbara Gaines. Set by Michael Philippi. Costumes by Nan Cibula- Jenkins. Lights by Kenneth Posner. Sound and music by Michael Bodeen. Fights by Bruce Young and David Woolley.
Cast
Daniel Allar (Ajax), Peter Aylward (Diomedes), Ed Bevan (Paris), Tom Daugherty (Antenor), Joe Foust (Helenus), Phil Gigante (Margarelon), Henry Godinez (Aeneas), Terrence Green (Hector), Julie Greenberg (Cassandra), Kristen Hornlien (Andromache), Chad Kelderman (Alexander), John Malloy (Agamemnon), Scott Parkinson (Patroclus), Robert Petkoff (Troilus), Wantland Sandel (Priam), Robert Scogin (Thersites), Duane Sharp (Menelaus/Calchas), Deborah Staples (Cressida), William Tyndale (Nestor), Greg Vinkler (Ulysses), Kate Walsh (Helen), Howard Witt (Pandarus), Bruce Young (Achilles).
Analysis
This production of Troilus and Cressida is the largest in the young history of Shakespeare Repertory, with a cast of twenty-six and minimal doubling. In interviews, founder Barbara Gaines cited Troilus and Cressida as her favorite play because of its metaphorical statements on human civilization. In her direction of this production, she accentuates the characters' inability to listen to themselves or to others, with the ensuing internal conflicts resulting in protracted and bloody war.
Costumes effectively differentiate the Trojans from the Greeks. The flamboyant Trojans are attired in loosely fitting white and cream-colored garments that feature capes and codpieces, and they comport themselves with stiff decorum. In 1.2, the warriors are satirically paraded one by one before Cressida, and Pandarus announces them to her as if they are stars from a modern sports team at a championship game. Each soldier dashes through the audience to the stage amid roaring applause and pauses onstage to salute, bow or wave to adoring fans. Conversely, when Cressida is exchanged later for a prisoner, she is conveyed in turn among numerous Greek warriors to be admired, wooed and kissed. Her juxtaposed status is clear. The besieging Greeks, in contrast to the Trojans, are coarse and gruff, clad in tattered rags of brown and black.
Gaines parodies the cause of the war as well as the war itself. In 3.1, the supposed "pearl" Helen is depicted as a nymphomaniacal cretin. Her shallowness is apparent as she dallies sexually with Paris while flirting with Pandarus. This characterization heightens Diomedes' disparagement of Helen in 4.1, as her dubious value is the reason for the seven-year siege. Further, the pre-battle contest between Hector and Ajax (4.5) is staged as a ludicrous spectacle with comic flourishes. The single combat begins like a modern wrestling title-bout when the massive Ajax appears from upstage as if he is a sumo-wrestler. Dramatically back-lit and nearly naked, he flexes, roars and shakes his enormous belly. When Hector approaches, he is enrobed and he bounces on his feet like a prizefighter. Their brightly lit, artificial "fight" is waged with exaggerated posturing, to the delight of the on-stage spectators.
The Ruth Page Theatre's s deeply thrust stage is well suited for intimate scenes, and there are a half-dozen steps that lead upstage to a larger, wider expanse that Gaines employs for battle sequences. The stage features a trap concealed beneath a planked walkway and ladders on each side that lead to small platforms. Gaines deftly utilizes the set in 3.3, when the fate of the lovers is determined. Onstage, Pandarus joins the hands of Troilus and Cressida, but the main lights dim as the stage-right platform is spot lit. There, the hooded Calchas demands his daughter Cressida be exchanged for a Trojan prisoner, sundering the lovers above even as they are being joined below.
Secured to the underside of the stage-left platform is a large, rolled-up net that comes into play in the production's most memorable scene. The netting is extended over the entire stage for 4.4. At center stage, Diomedes seduces Cressida, who vacillates between defiant struggle and feeble compliance. Troilus and Ulysses (as well as Thersites) witness the betrayal from upstage, but as the seduction progresses, Troilus becomes increasingly agitated and moves from ladder to ladder. Finally, he ascends the platform, and as Cressida begins her final fall, Troilus crawls out into the netting. When she succumbs to Diomedes, Troilus is sprawled overhead in the net, clutching at the mesh. Gaines shows him literally ensnared but also figuratively entrapped by his jealousy and lack of forgiveness for Cressida, as well as by his hatred of Diomedes. Ulysses, conniving and insincere throughout the play, is apparently sympathetic to Troilus. But as the scene concludes, he is the last to leave the stage, and he reveals himself - if only to the audience - as being repugnantly mean-spirited by laughing at Troilus' anguish.
The climactic battle is depicted as a staccato series of violent skirmishes. The stage is completely dark except for flashes of stark white that spotlight the combatants. Amid pulsating music and crashes of armor, the encounters are lit usually from above, but sometimes from banks of lighting on either side of the theatre, or through grates on the stage floor. The suddenness of these unexpected lighting shifts, when followed in rapid succession by darkness, produces a lightning-like strobe effect. The mood of the production begins a rapid downward spiral with this staging and the intensity of violence that is depicted. Parody gives way completely to pointed condemnation of war.
Striking images are interspersed with combat scenes. When Agamemnon arrives in 5.5, he stands far upstage, holding a large sword that he turns slowly to reflect a spotlight in glaring flashes. And Thersites, witnessing the bloodshed from a sprawl upon a platform, is harsh and derisive, spitting his lines like venom.
Troilus and Diomedes fight at center stage within a circle of light that is enmeshed with shadows, recalling the net in which Troilus was suspended. Later, Hector and Achilles wage their initial (5.6) combat within the same circle of light, although the shadows are now absent. Hector's nobility has been prominent throughout - from his refusal to fight to the death with Ajax to his relinquishing the coward Thersites - and his chivalry after disarming Achilles further infuriates the Greek. And rather than have a greed-driven Hector take armor from a slain Greek as in 5.8 of the text, Gaines instead depicts the Trojan as exhausted and disarming only to refresh himself at a pool of water.
A self-absorbed Achilles is at first detached from the war, entertained by Thersites' bitter wit and by his attraction to the slight Patroclus, played as an effeminate plaything. But Achilles becomes incensed through Ulysses' machinations, then homicidal after the death of Patroclus in 5.5. Horrors loom as Achilles dispatches the Myrmidons, a half-dozen black-hooded men who crouch and scurry about the stage like spiders, clad only in black tights and boots. Their ensuing confrontation with Hector is the savage culmination of the play, made especially vicious due to counterpoint with the light-hearted wrestling match between cousins in 4.5. The Myrmidons ambush the unarmed Hector as he splashes water in his face from the trap at center stage. They slash him repeatedly and he falls at the side of the pool. Then Achilles places his boot on the back of Hector's neck, forcing his face into the water. As Hector thrashes and begins to drown, Achilles plunges a sword into his back and kills him. The Trojans later discover Hector upstage, hanging upside down by the feet, his torso drenched with blood. The futility of nobility and honor during warfare is made painfully evident.
Although Achilles' bloodlust, even in its intensity, is expected, as is Hector's brutal demise, the change in Troilus is intended by Gaines as the play's true tragedy. At the beginning the prince is portrayed as a reluctant soldier and a deluded romantic, long-haired and fresh-faced in appearance and dashing and Romeo-like in demeanor. After Cressida's betrayal and Hector's death, however, he is as murderous as Achilles. As he demands the war continue, he crouches and sneers, wielding his sword to threaten every section of the audience.
The production concludes with Pandarus at center stage, bedraggled and now bootless. Apparently disease-ridden people, swaddled like mummies, are sprawled like specters on the stage around him. Pandarus' final line, bequeathing to the audience his diseases, is punctuated by screams and the rush of the specters offstage and through the audience. Pandarus, now alone, turns and stumbles slowly into red lighting upstage as the lights go out, grimly concluding the unrelenting second half of this production.
Note: A version of this article was edited and published in Shakespeare Bulletin, Vol.13, No.2, Spring 1995.