Cymbeline has a reputation as one of Shakespeares hardest plays to stage.

In Cheek By Jowls
superb production at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, director Declan Donnellan and designer
Nick Ormerod approach staging problems the way a mathematical genius tackles a thorny
theoremwith astonishing creativity and real delight in the challenge. The spare sets and moody
lighting form an elegant backdrop for some of the trickiest and most effective blocking Ive ever
seenthere are often two or three subplots coexisting on the stage at the same moment, and the
depth of the space brings the audience into a vast, compelling world. The physical interplay
between charactersincluding characters in co-existing, but separate plotlines--underscores the
wit and hijinx of the play itself. Cymbeline has been by turns classified as a comedy and as a
tragedy, and this production explores all of the possibilities, with chic film noir costumes and
styling and many nods to the great films of the 30s and 40s that were at once understated and
winningly screwball. Like those films, this production stealthily moves from romantic comedy to
scorching political satire. Audience members were often doubled over with laughter, yet the lurid
images of Imogen caressing a bloody, headless corpse and of the king and his newly embraced
sons facing a roaring crowd are indelible.
Performance-wise, Cheek by Jowl focuses here on creating a true, bantering, fast-paced
ensemble piece, and each of the players is as much a visual entity or a design element of this
noir world, as a performer or character, and most are re-imagined as classic cinematic icons.
Gwendoline Christies stepmother/Queen is an evil ice-blonde bombshell, clutching her muchshorter husband to her breasts and cooing in baby talk. Guy Flanagans leading-man looks and
soft Italian accent give his Iachimo the perfect oozy, lecherous charm. David Collings king
Cymbeline is the consummate slick politician, complete with a Ronald Reagan haircut and an
almost-terrifying warmth as he greets the people. Tom Hiddleson steals every scene in a
virtuosic dual performance as a kind of strawman Posthumus and a swaggering, repellently
pleased-with-himself, entitled Cloten. He is the kind of rare actor who commands attention just by
walking onstage. Donnellan gives these actors a kind of free reign to fully inhabit the space of
their performance, of the world of Cymbeline, encountering each other in a series of events that
take on a life of their own, an independence from the usual confines of the stage. There is
something very intimate, in a romantic sense, about the way the characters and the design bring
each other to lifeits unsurprising that the director and designer are a couple. The characters
seduce and spurn each other, banter artfully, advance and retreat, caress and avoid. In one
hilarious scene, Imogen (Jodie McNee) in drag, dressed as a sort of thirties vagabond, repeatedly
approaches her beloved Posthumus and he unceremoniously pushes her away, again and again,
like an overaffectionate stray dog. In earlier moments, Imogen (in a blood-red dress) tauntingly
seduces the loathsome Cloten even as she rejects him. The seamless blend of physical and
verbal action brings a contemporary freshness to Shakespeares dialogue. Ultimately, the
production is unforgettablethe world created on the stage is so unique that it stays alive in your
mind after youve left the theater.

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