Sunday 15 July 2018

Play review: Cymbeline

Last year The Winter's Tale; this year Cymbeline. Like AWT the plot has to be regarded as compressed. We this time were M, Mother and I; and the picnic blanket from the car to keep us warm in the second half: despite the long run of hot dry weather it grows chill at night if you're out.

The production was not quite so smooth this time. The audience was a little thin, and two of the actors - the servant, and one of the romans - must have been pressed at the last moment as they had scripts (though the servant managed his quite well and I only realised it was a script, not some letters he was carrying, nearly at the interval). Also the two princes were played by women.

Is there much to be got out of it? The dialogue is "witty" in that rather hard to follow, but rewarding if you do make it the the end of the sentence way that Shakespeare has; and they spoke it well. There's a kind of a plot, though why people would go from "Britain" to "Italy" via Milford Haven is somewhat obscure. Not I think one of the major works.

Oh, and the woman who played several roles - Belarius; and a woman in Italy - was so like Micky, of about 20 years ago, in her role at Rome.

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