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Burly men in plastic armour do their best battle acting. Commanders pace back and forth, mulling their tactics aloud. Warriors clash flimsy swords on tinny shields, then throw each other to the floor and wrestle. They beat their chests and shout their names in each others’ faces. “We are Trojans,” roars one battle-hardened hero. “Of Troy!”
If all this shows up the absurdity of machismo – poet Simon Armitage makes clear that a war fought over a woman, Helen of Troy, with women as its spoils, is a war fought by brutes – it also flags the absurdity of theatre. Nick Bagnall’s production probably found a coiled intensity at the Manchester Royal Exchange, but on the Globe’s wooden stage, out in the open air, it looks like so much play-acting. Don’t get me wrong: it’s great fun to watch – like Battlestar Galactica at its best/worst – but you can’t take it half as seriously as it takes itself.
Elsewhere, its tone u-turns: the gods saunter through battle scenes like a sitcom family at a garden party, debating whether or not to intervene, while Odysseus – brainy and battle-weary – concocts fresh schemes for the conflict. This is, remember, a decade-old war, still “no closer to resolution.” Armitage lets you make your own links to Iraq, and his patchwork version essentially recounts the myth as is, stressing only that it is couched in ideal terms of beauty, brawn and brains.
You can’t fault the cast’s commitment. Jake Fairbrother’s Achilles is properly steroidal, while Tom Stuart preens to perfection as Paris. Richard Bremmer’s Zeus provides light relief, forever bickering with Gillian Bevan’s sarky Hera.
Headline casting provides the weak link: Lily Cole might look the part as Helen of Troy, but she can’t act it. She delivers her lines like the speaking clock; the voice that launched a thousand pips.