I'd never see this play before, only the Opera when I was 10 and I didn't remember much of that, not surprisingly.
I'd hesitated a bit over watching this one from the set but as always with Shakespeare I was caught up in it right from the start. I do have a few gripes though. I felt Cressida did just a bit too much wailing when told she must leave Troy and her lover. I don't complain much, as someone else has on this list that they were wearing the wrong clothes etc or that the fighting scenes weren't very realistic. I think the director was trying to show the play as it would appear in Shakespeare's time so it's fine that the clothes are contemporary rather than Ancient Greek (did people of Shakespeare's time know what Ancient Greeks wore?) and we couldn't expect the actors to do lengthy realistic duels. But yes, the duel between Ajax and Hector was unconvincingly coy. Did Achilles really not kill Hector himself but have Hector set upon and murdered by his followers and then profess to having done the killing himself? What exactly happened to Troilus's rival for Cressida or did I somehow fall asleep at the moment whatever happened? And finally, why oh why wasn't Achilles' death included, that so very famous sequence when Paris shoots him with an arrow in the one place he's vulnerable? This is why I ask if the play's unfinished - there's no revenge shown for Hector's death and wouldn't Shakespeare have wanted to include this famous sequence as a fitting finale? But perhaps I can be convinced that Shakespeare's ending is right, that it
I was impressed by all the actors, especially Bernard Whitrow as Ulysses and Charles Gray as Pandarus.
I'd hesitated a bit over watching this one from the set but as always with Shakespeare I was caught up in it right from the start. I do have a few gripes though. I felt Cressida did just a bit too much wailing when told she must leave Troy and her lover. I don't complain much, as someone else has on this list that they were wearing the wrong clothes etc or that the fighting scenes weren't very realistic. I think the director was trying to show the play as it would appear in Shakespeare's time so it's fine that the clothes are contemporary rather than Ancient Greek (did people of Shakespeare's time know what Ancient Greeks wore?) and we couldn't expect the actors to do lengthy realistic duels. But yes, the duel between Ajax and Hector was unconvincingly coy. Did Achilles really not kill Hector himself but have Hector set upon and murdered by his followers and then profess to having done the killing himself? What exactly happened to Troilus's rival for Cressida or did I somehow fall asleep at the moment whatever happened? And finally, why oh why wasn't Achilles' death included, that so very famous sequence when Paris shoots him with an arrow in the one place he's vulnerable? This is why I ask if the play's unfinished - there's no revenge shown for Hector's death and wouldn't Shakespeare have wanted to include this famous sequence as a fitting finale? But perhaps I can be convinced that Shakespeare's ending is right, that it
I was impressed by all the actors, especially Bernard Whitrow as Ulysses and Charles Gray as Pandarus.