19:30, Tue 14th – Sat 18th February 2006 at School of Pythagoras, Johns
Lent Week 4

“Troilus and Cressida, that most vexing and ambiguous of Shakespeare's plays, strikes the modern reader as a contemporary document” - Joyce Carol Oates. Love is multi-dimensional, flawed, unfaithful and warped in Shakespeare’s most obfusticated tragedy. The petty complexities of the Trojan War rage on, whilst a private affair is taking place. Love mixes with war, but the play is more than this cliché alone. Dark, sinister and vile violence mixes with gleeful comedy and parody, until everything falls and all is meaningless. The boundaries of love – what is is, to what extent it exists, what role it has – are all explored, but explored against a backdrop of a scene where no love can flourish; a scene of carnage and of impetuous and impulsive rivalry.