First things first: this review comes with a caveat. For today’s matinee performance of Shakespeare’s lesser-performed ‘tragedy’ in the Globe’s atmospheric candlelit Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, Cymbeline herself -Martina Laird – is indisposed. As the Globe does not have understudies, the role is read, book in hand, by cover Angelina Chudi. It’s an admiral task but it does make a full review a little challenging. Not impossible though – the gender-swapped Queen of Britain is a somewhat fringe player in the events of the play that bears her name.
Instead, the main focus is on the relationship between Cymbeline’s daughter Innogen (Gabrielle Brooks) and her wife Posthumus (Nadi Kemp-Sayfi) with the latter also genderswapped here. Having married without her permission, Cymbeline banishes Posthumus, who in her exile places a bet with the Italian gentleman Iachimo (Pierro Niel-Mee) that he cannot seduce Innogen. Unsurprisingly, such a bet has less than pleasant consequences.
That description is to boil a play with more subplots than the television show Lost down to its barest bones. Among them, Cymbeline’s husband, the Duke (Silas Carson), is plotting against his Queen while her twins, kidnapped from their nursery two decades previously, suddenly reappear in the second act as Rome declares war on Britain and disguised characters assume new identities. The subplots tie themselves in knots until Shakespeare untangles them and attempts to form some form of coherent ending in the play’s final throes. As one twist after another is revealed at the battle’s end it feels like a farce without laughs, even if Jennifer Tang leans into the comedy elsewhere in the production.
But really, Tang is constrained by a play that isn’t funny enough to go for all-out laughs but with scenarios that are too contrived (even by Shakespeare’s standards) for it to be played entirely straight. Tang instead opts for a middle-ground – with limited results. You wonder if it would have been better to choose one and go for broke.
Meanwhile, the gender-swapping does little to unpick any political meaning or social commentary. If anything, it muddies the waters – it is no longer toxic masculinity on display when the female Posthumus places her bet on her wife’s faithfulness. Meanwhile, Laura Moody’s compositions that soundtrack events land somewhere in a vague ‘world music’ realm. At times they add to the tension but more often they feel like a distraction.
It is saved somewhat by its performances. Niel-Mee plays Iachimo with impressive smarminess while Kemp-Sayfi and Brooks are refreshing as the couple with their wires crossed. But throw in a near-3-hour running time and you have a production that could easily be pigeonholed as one for the Shakespeare diehards seeking to tick another of his lesser-performed plays.
Rating: ★★☆☆☆
