Cymbeline: Shakespeare's kitchen sink approach to plot and style becomes mesmerizing
11 Jun 2024 - Photos by David Hou

Aside from providing entertainment on a grand scale, one of the things that the Stratford Festival does very well is to take the more obscure Shakespearean plays and bring them to the fore. Cymbeline is a play that I have to admit I had known of only by name. With any of the classics—the ones we are taught in high school English classes—one goes in with a certain foreknowledge. The plot and characters are at least vaguely familiar, as are some of the dominant themes, and there will be several quotes or passages that are hooks to hang the ornate language upon for reference. The programme for Cymbeline includes, amidst a wealth of information and ideas, a synopsis which is quite detailed. And which I found quite confusing. No wonder, though this production provides striking clarity, Cymbeline is absolutely bonkers in a most off-kilter and delightful way.

At it's heart, Cymbeline is a love story. Allison Edwards-Crewe (Girls Like That) is Imogen, the feisty daughter of the regal queen Cymbeline played by the very regal Lucy Peacock. Imogen is in love with the non-royal Jordin Hall (Richard II) as the non-royal but comfortably wealthy Posthumus. It's understandable, Imogen's other suitors are fops while Hall has a resonant voice that makes his lines ring. He has also has a practical haircut with only three short beaded braids dangling on one side. This Cymbeline is also very much about hair and haircuts. As well as the refusal of royal assent, the lovers' marriage plans are thwarted by Tyrone Savage (Richard II, Fifteen Dogs, Rent) as Iachimo who wagers Posthumus that Imogen is seducible. If anyone could, it would be the dashing Savage, but Imogen senses the oil slick that is his soul and refuses to surrender her virtue to anyone other than her true love Posthumus.

So Iachimo fakes it to win the bet. The scene where he explores the sleeping Imogen's bedroom and very body in search of evidence is a sterling example of the tonal shifts that this Cymbeline manages to balance. The scene begins hysterically funny before becoming progressively creepier until it ends in horror and a theft that drives the plot. Posthumus is devastated and orders Irene Poole (Manon, Sandra and the Virgin Mary) as the beleaguered and conflicted servant  Pisanio to, shades of Snow White, lure Imogen into the forest and kill her. Will true love triumph over deceit? The question should be: will true love manage to rise above the multitude of other plotlines? There is Rick Roberts (Prodigal, Animal Farm, Prince Hamlet, An Enemy of the People) as a Duke who has seduced the queen and who swans around the stage, in the best coded Disney animated villain style, wearing a stylish kaftan crowned with a cascading head of tied back hair. To increase the melodrama, he occasionally steps into a spotlight to tell us directly of his nefarious plans.

The queen has troubles of her own. The Romans are demanding that tribute be paid, and her two bastard infant sons were kidnapped a decade and a half ago and she's still not over it. Nor is she over the loss of the baby daddy she was forced to banish. Add in mistaken identities, cross-gender and cross-political affiliation disguises, spectacular battles and swordplay, a humorous herbalist (Wahsonti:io Kirby) who dabbles in poisons and the sleeping potion familiar from Romeo and Juliet, a trio of goofy but butch fur-clad hunters (Noah Beemer [A Wrinkle in Time, Pinocchio], Jonathan Goad and Michael Wamara) who live homoerotically in a cave, and considerable political jockeying in the court of poor Cymbeline that is worthy of a soap opera on the scale of the Windsors. There is also an overarching ecological concern with a neon Druid tree, a spooky soothsayer (Cynthia Jimenez-Hicks [Girls Like That, Hello Again]), and the intervention of the god Jupiter played by the deep-voiced, gold-dusted and deliciously muscled Marcus Nance (Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, Frankenstein Revived, Richard II).

Oddly, all of this, including the iambic pentameter and profusion of puns, is far less confusing than it could be. What is confusing, in an edge of one's seat manner, is the wild tonal shifts. We begin with spectacle as Jupiter and the soothsayer materialize on stage in clouds of dry ice. What follows veers wildly from comedy to drama to supernatural suspense, all set to a hurdy gurdy horror movie score courtesy of master maestro Njo Kong Kie (Year of the Cello, Mr Shi and his Lover, No Strings [Attached], Infinity). The most extreme, so effective it is an emotional jump scare, tonal shock tactic has a hilarious Christopher Allen (Rockabye, Redbone Coonhound, Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, Orphans for the Czar) have his running joke about his Prince-esque 'do, cut short in a way that drew shocked gasps, then nervous laughter, then belly laughs, from the audience. Director Esther Jun somehow harnesses all the disparate moods and shades, Shakespeare's kitchen sink approach to plot and style, and shapes it into a production that is wildly entertaining and consistently mesmerizing. Cymbeline can probably never be shaped into a Shakespearean classic, but it could easily become a favourite.