The newly refurbished Arts Theatre is an incredibly cramped space and that’s before you add the crowd of friends and reviewers who turned up to watch the National Youth Theatre’s production of Cymbeline. The gents is possibly one of the tightest urinals in London with the door banging open on the luckless toilet-goer, and the seats in the auditorium are narrow too; one has to wrestle for every available inch of elbow space – often by stealth during scene changes. Despite these disadvantages, the production was good enough for you to forget about the discomfort, and transport you into a world of Celtic dream imagery.
      Cymbeline is a rather unsatisfying play, the plot complications seem merely just that – complications to beguile the audience for a couple of hours with little substance outside the unravelling of two seemingly unintegrated plot strands. The first plot-line deals with Cymbeline’s unwillingness to allow his daughter to marry the honourable but poor Posthumus who has been brought up within the court alongside the King’s daughter. The second story-line concerns the fate of Cymbeline’s missing sons which is mentioned in the opening and then forgotten about until much later.
      The play’s themes of Britishness, jealousy and generational conflict all sweep by in quick and dreamlike succession but never reach outside the writing to resonate long enough in the audience. This is a flaw in the play and not of this production which admirably tried to turn weaknesses into strengths.
      Samuel Wyer’s design created a fluid dreamlike world where the play’s illogicalities were part of this tense Pagan fairytale. Simple white curtains hanging at the back of the stage were plucked straight from the Gothic boudoir (with all its ritualized blood-letting) of Angela Carter. The curtains were awash with projected shadows of leaves to suggest the remote forests of Wales and waves lapping along the coast. In keeping with the adult fairytale theme, the director chose to cast the Queen, the excellent and tight-lipped Catriona Cahill, as an evil stepmother with long legs, black corset and dominatrix heels. She stalked the stage in her brittle costume seeking out poisonous medicines and scheming against her husband.
      Cymbeline was portrayed as a bad-tempered, slobbish monarch, his face set in a permanent hangover of displeasure. He was by no means a sober and judicious monarch corrupted by his wife’s evil machinations—in this production the rot had set in from the beginning. Luc McEwan stomped around the set, completely convincing as a man hopelessly goaded and enslaved by his lust for a wicked second wife. Rosie Sansom’s resourceful Imogen was a necessary counterweight to her father’s bad decisions and lust-based choices. Although too caught up in the net of a love affair with Posthumus, one saw that Imogen’s net was a gilded one made up of reciprocal feeling and support; a noble love which dignified rather than enslaved. Unfortunately, it might be me or the modern sensibility (or just plain high heels )but I was always looking forward to the stepmother’s reappearance.
      Cloten, the King’s stepson, was played with comic brio by Will Edelsten who tried to outdo his stepfather in bad temper. He was a mini version of the unhinged King, draped in black furs and scowling during their meeting with the Roman General, Caius Lucius. Edelsten portrayed the Prince’s puffed up vanity and his hopeless callowness, a would-be King strutting around in Elizabethan knickerbockers. Posthumus himself was worthy and hot-blooded but his virtuous nature never really thrills. He’s too much of a consummate hero for today’s jaundiced audience. The play also demonstrated the actors’ ability to breath life into the songs and the battle scenes which were excitingly choreographed by Raquel Meseguer. Nonetheless, one is left with a patchwork quilt, vibrant scenes and then more obvious plotting. The play also ends on a curiously deflating note. After many revelations (which become pretty ludicrous) as Cymbeline reels from another unmasking we are left with a shabby looking court, hopefully to be regenerated by the next generation, with Britain still paying off an oppressive hostile force with tribute— this added a contemporary flavour to the drama.
Daniel Jeffreys