If Love's Labour's Lost can feel like the young Shakespeare workshopping setpieces he would perfect later in his career, Cymbeline could be the older playwright collecting every mad idea he couldn't fit into an earlier play, then throwing them all together to see what happens. The story of Roman Britain sees Princess Innogen (Gabrielle Brooks) separated from her exiled spouse, to be reunited only after a deranged fairytale quest that includes a man hiding in a trunk, a health tonic that's actually a deadly poison that's actually just a sleeping draught, meeting a pair of siblings she never knew existed, and a headless corpse largely played for laughs. The Swanamaker's latest take on the play gender-flips a lot of characters including the titular king; I understand the desire for a powerful female leader figure, but it feels a bit of a pyrrhic victory for that leader to struggle to make an impression because she spends the whole play on more sedatives than a 1980s soap opera housewife.
At least Jennifer Tang's production builds a strong premise for its female-heavy cast: Here Martina Laird's Cymbeline becomes the Boadicea-like warrior queen of a Gaia-worshipping matriarchal tribe, who keep the violent Romans at bay with a regular cash tribute.

So in a play that already features two slimy men there is a logic to gender-flipping the wicked stepmother into a third, the Duke (Silas Carson,) who as well as literally poisoning Cymbeline has been metaphorically poisoning the tribe's culture. He's responsible for stopping the tribute, resulting in a battle with the Romans in the second half as if there weren't already enough shenanigans going on. Perhaps this negative masculine energy could also be blamed for the way the otherwise seemingly liberal culture turns on Innogen for choosing to marry a woman, Posthumous Leonata (Nadi Kemp-Sayfi,) instead of the pre-arranged marriage to the Duke's son Cloten (Jordan Mifsúd.)

I'm tempted to also see the way Cymbeline banishes Posthumous as the play commenting on the kind of group of women who'll be vocally feminist until it comes to the kind of woman who doesn't fit their precise guidelines, but that could just be me extrapolating - it's not like Tang doesn't already have enough going on. In any case, although there do remain a few positive male characters, the focus is on this creepy trio, completed by Pierro Niel-Mee's Iachimo, the Roman who sneaks into Innogen's bedroom and juuust about stops short of sexual assault.

So the play is full of dark elements that got it originally categorised among the tragedies, and the production acknowledges this, but its strength is in the way it picks up every moment of comedy. The trio of bad guys lean towards the ridiculous anyway, especially Cloten, but the cast nicely pick up on the characters' confused reactions to the way everything has to be twisted to fit the convoluted plot: The disguised Innogen's secret older siblings (Aaron Anthony and Saroja-Lily Ratnavel) having an instant protective love towards her they don't understand, Posthumous changing sides in the battle more often than the wind changes, Belaria (Madeline Appiah) joking that the Queen owes her money for raising her kids, like mate, you kidnapped them, I wouldn't go making the ground you stand on any more precarious than it already is.

But I'm now old enough to have seen even the rarer Shakespeares a few times and I feel like Cymbeline deserves its comparative obscurity. It has its weird and wonderful moments but it's very long, and its many, randomly intersecting plotlines seem to make it hard for directors to make edits (as well as culminating in an interminable final scene that largely involves Basil Exposition speeches catching everyone up on everything we've just watched.) In the case of this production specifically, I did feel it was a shame that Basia Bińkowska's design installs a well full of water centre-stage only for very little of interest to happen with it. At least if the production can't help the way the play stretches the audience's patience, it can successfully milk every laugh possible from its complexity.
Cymbeline by William Shakespeare is booking in repertory until the 20th of April at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse.
Running time: 3 hours including interval.
Photo credit: Marc Brenner.

Source: View source