Vicksburg-on-Avon

In a set that could be Mammoth Cave swallowing the Parthenon of Nashville, the American Shakespeare Festival at Stratford, Conn, last week opened a production of Troilus and Cressida. But what ho? There, on a camp stool, sat mighty Agamemnon, stroking his beard, smoking a ten-inch cigar, wearing the uniform of a Union general and looking for all the world like an actor dressed up to play Ulysses S. Grant. There too was doddering old Nestor, also wearing the blue, with binoculars around his neck. Menelaus wore pince-nez, and they all used the spittoon and the likker jug. The Trojan War had turned into the U.S. Civil War, and before the play was over, muskets banged, cannon boomed, and that old states-righter, Hector, lost his bridgework to six Greco-Yankee bayonets.

In the center of this Vicksburg-on-Avon, Troilus himself was a Confederate lieutenant, and his faithless little old Cressida's motto seemed to be: More scarlet than thou, O'Hara. Pandarus oleoed between the lovers, with slicked-down hair and a Burgundy dressing gown, and made his last exit carrying a carpetbag. "As I worked on the play," explains Stratford Director Jack Landau, "it became clear to me that the division was not one country against another, one part of society against another. It's a culture divided against itself--in effect, a civil war."

Despite Director Landau's rationalizations, Shakespeare's "bitter comedy" is just a little more relevant to the Conflict Between the States than it is to a Macy's-Gimbels' price war. Effective only in scattered scenes and particularly in the foul language and cold ironies of its Thersites, who, more than anyone else, probably represents Shakespeare's point of view, the play is difficult to stage in any context. But Shakespearean directors have long tried to meet the challenge anyway, notably Tyrone Guthrie, who, with the Old Vic, once did Troilus and Cressida as an Edwardian period piece, the Greeks as Prussians and the Trojans as British guards.

Acted woodenly and with Pat Hingle as Hector, Jessica Tandy as Cassandra, and Kim Hunter as Helen, the Stratford production gives audiences the feeling that they are watching The Red Badge of Courage with Shakespeare dubbed into the sound track. Chuck wagon, gunfire, sounding of taps--it is minor ingeniousness at the expense of genius. In the end, the Civil War trick seems merely a capitalization on the war's 100th anniversary fever, and in 1976 Troilus will probably be done again at Stratford set at Valley Forge.

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