WARLIKE FROTTAGE
The Porters of Hellsgate’s production of Shakespeare’s Trojan War essay, Troilus and Cressida, begins promisingly. A shifting tableau establishes characters and relationships during the Prologue’s welcome, telling visually a story that might be hard to follow due to its many characters, plot lines, and changes of theme. It’s too bad Charles Pasternak then stops directing such stage pictures until the anticlimactic battle, which again suggests his capacity as a storyteller. After that, in apparent apology for the play’s lack of denouement, Pasternak repeats the prologue, placing it pointedly in the mouths of the play’s women. But by then, the playgoer may not care enough to notice.
Troilus and Cressida has always been a difficult play to stage. As well as whipping an odd froth of low comedy and brutal tragedy, Shakespeare this time serves up a central conflict without resolution. Added to that, a story and tone that make Titus Andronicus look like a Thomas Kinkade painting: Shakespeare here allows his misanthropy its freest hand. Lovers cheat; allies conspire against one another; war grinds away the dignity of age and title. In this 
nihilist’s paradise, every noble endeavor is thwarted by duplicity or spite. Even Shakespeare’s puns are bleak, comparing “warlike fraughtage” – warriors jostling out of Greek warships – with mere sexual friction, essentially reducing the siege of Troy, one of the most revered pieces of Western mythology, to a masturbatory indulgence. Alas, real frottage might have been more interesting to watch than this straightforward staging, handicapped by an ensemble largely incapable of expressing the language.
A depressing percentage of this cast is of the “saw the air with your hand thus” school of indicative acting, and what might have been one of the best performances, Gus Krieger’s Thersites, is crippled by the actor’s tendency to swallow the ends of his lines. Thomas Bigley’s Ulysses successfully interpolates emotion and technique, as do Matt Calloway’s Achilles, Napoleon Tavale’s Hector, and a few others; but they are outnumbered by cast members who either do not understand iambic pentameter or cannot convey a convincing intention. 
It is surprising to note that almost all these actors have performed verse before. Allowing a gamut of acting styles, from Three Stooges presentational to John Waters camp to Peter Brook austerity, must be a temptation for a director attempting this messy play. Mr. Pasternak should have known to resist, for he makes an occasional bold choice, as when he supplies the play’s missing climax in a Grand Guignol dumbshow. But that tidy final scene – which belies 
Shakespeare’s intentionally unsatisfying, thematically necessary structure – only points up the aimlessness elsewhere in the production. Modern boots and trousers are paired with tribal tunics and classical gowns; the music clashes electric guitar against medieval horns. If your show makes no objective sense, to whom do you intend to show it? To yourself, of course. Players always know what they think they mean, even when they leave the spectator baffled.
Troilus and Cressida
The Whitmore Theatre, North Hollywood, CA
scheduled to end on February 19
for tickets, visit http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/216520
for more info, visit http://www.portersofhellsgate.com