[In the following review, McQueen-Thomson contends that Michael Bogdanov's 2000 Bell Shakespeare Company production of Troilus + Cressida successfully combined “audacious, challenging production with intelligent, coherent interpretation, proving the strengths of theatre as a political medium.”]

The Bell Shakespeare Company (BSC), launched in August 1990, is celebrating its tenth birthday with Troilus + Cressida, directed by Michael Bogdanov. Company founder and Artistic Director, John Bell, has aspired to create ‘a world-class Shakespeare company’. Bogdanov's Troilus + Cressida shows that Bell has largely succeeded in this aim. The BSC stands out for its willingness to both embrace multiple Australian cultural concerns and risk bold interpretations. The presence of this world-class Shakespeare company indicates that Australian theatre has largely been freed both from the thrall of the mother country and from the equally pernicious flipside of the cultural cringe—singular, parochial nationalism.

The BSC has not become precisely the group that was originally envisaged. One of their first—and most widely publicised—goals was to perform in a transportable replica Globe Theatre, complete with three-tiered seating. Fortunately, Australia has been spared from a mobile Elizabethan theme park, and this plan has not been mooted in public recently. Instead, we have a touring company which performs largely in conventional modern theatres, such as Melbourne's Athenaeum or the Sydney Opera House. Another early ambition was to make Shakespeare far more accessible. It has partially succeeded in this respect, especially with its ‘in the regions’ program (which tours outside Australia's capital cities) and its ‘actors at work’ program (which visits schools). It has even performed in a women's prison. The BSC has made notable efforts to attract younger audiences—claiming that roughly one-third of their patrons are under thirty. However, in cities their audiences differ little from those of the other established theatre companies. Bell's aim of making Shakespeare more accessible has been a limited success.

The BSC has just toured successfully to Japan. It has a portfolio of corporate and government sponsorships to turn other Australian arts organisations green with envy. However, becoming a world-class Shakespeare company involves much more than these tokens of financial success. Instead, it requires an identifiable, distinctive and contemporary approach to Shakespeare combined with outstanding performance quality.

New audiences would be significantly encouraged if the BSC ventured more from the safe confines of established theatres. And audience diversity would become easier to promote if the company was not so dependent on corporate funding sources. When corporate sponsors use performances as a means for entertaining and persuading prospective clients, gestures toward radicalism will inevitably be circumscribed.

BSC hallmarks include eclecticism and high-impact visuals. The BSC has always avoided the strictures of plummy ‘received pronunciation’, instead allowing actors with a mixture of accents and cultural backgrounds to speak in their own voices. This aural mixture creates a distinctly Australian fluidity which opens the frame of reference in Shakespeare performance. Sometimes this creates an overwhelming level of allusions, though it can be exhilarating when successful, as in John Bell's Henry 5 or Jim Sharman's The Tempest. The BSC's approach to Shakespeare involves an emphasis on cultural collisions, especially around race and gender. Their productions are often hard-edged, full of conflict, avoiding easy resolutions. A recurring problem for the BSC, though, is maintaining a consistently high standard across casts. Until greater ensemble consistency is achieved, the BSC's potential will remain constrained.

The Bell Shakespeare Company is promoting Troilus + Cressida as their ‘largest and most ambitious production’ ever. And they have their most famous director yet. Michael Bogdanov might be known to Australian audiences for his recent TV documentary, Shakespeare on the Estate, in which he set out to show that Shakespeare's appeal is not universal. Bogdanov took a group of residents from a dilapidated English housing estate and rehearsed Shakespeare scenes with them, thereby demonstrating the limits of Shakespeare's contemporary purchase. Earlier this year, Bogdanov ignited controversy by announcing on BBC radio that ‘Shakespeare is dead’, meaning that Shakespeare has been hijacked, by a moribund conservative literary establishment. Throughout his career, Bogdanov has been interested in using theatre as a forum for political provocation, and especially for challenging liberal orthodoxies about Shakespeare as an unconditional genius.

Bogdanov's production of Troilus + Cressida begins on a stage divided between epic silver columns on the left and a stale lounge room jumbled with TV screens on the right. This brilliant set immediately suggests the play's opposition between heroism and apathy. For the first few acts of the play, a singlet-clad slob sucks tinnies and watches the box. It is only in Act Two that we discover this is the mighty Achilles, Greek hero renowned for his invincibility and strength. The second half opens with a hilarious rap in drag by macho Achilles and his fairy mate Patroclus.

John Bell is captivating as Ulysses, and is especially moving in his performance of the famous speech on order and degree. This speech contains the most quoted lines from this often neglected play: ‘Take but degree away, untune that string, / And hark what discord follows’. In the early 1980s, the UK Chancellor for the Exchequer under Thatcher notoriously quoted these lines to demonstrate that ‘Shakespeare was a Tory, without any doubt’. Ironically, these lines and Ulysses' interpretation of events in Troy are refuted by the play's developments. In Troilus + Cressida, chaos ensues not because of a lack of respect for authority structures, but because those in authority themselves have become overwhelmed by base appetites. Bogdanov does not allow his audience to think that greater leadership will resolve the strife in Troy. Instead, his interpretation suggests powerfully that desire is the problem, particularly voyeuristic desire from those who consume images of war.

Throughout the production, Pandarus (played wonderfully by Bille Brown) provides a unifying thread. From his entertaining opening ad lib on love and war to his final desolation and emptiness, Pandarus reminds us of the spectacle of violence and sex. Portrayed as a perverted voyeur and game-show host, Pandarus carries a camera as he makes various attempts at seduction. He even surreptitiously films Troilus' and Cressida's first sexual encounter: their naked bodies seem unbearably vulnerable and frail amid this technology of media and war.

Blazey Best as Cressida and Helen Thomson as Helen of Troy both succeed in conveying the play's unease about women being treated as bargaining chips in men's fighting at Troy. Many critics have been puzzled by Cressida's unfaithfulness to Troilus. Bogdanov does not attempt to explain Cressida's sudden change of heart. Instead, he presents her as utterly manipulated and abused on every front.

Troilus + Cressida poses serious questions about the carefully controlled production and careless consumption of media images of war. In the wake of Kosovo and East Timor, this is a crucial subject, and Troilus + Cressida shows how a theatre company can make Shakespeare compelling and relevant. Bogdanov's Troilus + Cressida successfully combines audacious, challenging production with intelligent, coherent interpretation, proving the strengths of theatre as a political medium. It also demonstrates the enormous contribution to Australian life of the Bell Shakespeare Company as it turns ten.