‘It’s three hours, but it’s action-packed’: How the cast of Cymbeline navigates one of Shakespeare’s most eventful plays
iPhoto caption: Members of the company in Cymbeline. Stratford Festival 2024. Photo by David Hou.
A lot happens in Cymbeline.
If asked to recount the plot of the mammoth Shakespeare romance after a single viewing, I’d wager most audience members would forget at least one major element — whether it’s the beheading, the visit from Jupiter, the vial of poison that’s actually a sleeping potion, or the full-on Roman war.
Innogen, the play’s fiery heroine, goes on a particularly eventful journey. Daughter of Ancient Britain’s titular king — or queen, in the Stratford Festival’s latest production, directed by Esther Jun at the Tom Patterson Theatre — she sets the narrative in motion by making the controversial choice to marry her lover Posthumus, rather than someone of purely royal descent.
Throughout, a host of men do their best to push Innogen around: Cymbeline’s husband attempts to poison her; his arrogant son Cloten chases after her hand in marriage; and the villainous Iachimo uses hyper-creepy methods to trick Posthumus into thinking she’s been unfaithful, sending him into a violent rage.
But Allison Edwards-Crewe, who plays Innogen in Stratford’s production, doesn’t find this bombardment overwhelming — in fact, she seems to relish in it, even drawing parallels between the pulpiness of the play and the melodramatics of trashy television.
“My first impression was that this show is crazy and that it’s just a telenovela,” she said in a Zoom interview with Intermission. “Because I was like, ‘this is so extreme, this is so insane.’ But also, we all watch Days of Our Lives, we’ve all watched soap operas. We love a love triangle, we love people living on the edges of emotion.”
Edwards-Crewe enjoys Cymbeline’s ups and downs, but that doesn’t mean Innogen should — Jun and the actor have worked hard to avoid letting the character slip into passivity.
“Esther likes women being very strong and fully faceted, so I think something that she wanted was… for this ingenue to show anger,” Edwards-Crewe said. “There’s a world in which she could be quite sweet and feel a lot like the victim of her circumstances. And I feel like we tried to ensure that she understood her injustice as injustice, and not something that should’ve happened to her in any way.”
On the other side of the equation, Christopher Allen and Jordin Hall — Cloten and Posthumus, respectively — have to try and justify their characters’ erratic behaviour. This involves thinking deeply about psychology: in the first minutes of our group call, both spoke about how they imagine their characters’ backstories.
“I feel like Cloten, his whole life, he’s just gotten everything he’s ever wanted,” said Allen. “And then just before this play starts, it’s all taken away from him, because Innogen and Posthumus get married. So his whole future’s gone… and he’s trying to figure out how he can get it all back.”
Posthumus, conversely, “didn’t grow up with any biological parents,” said Hall. “He has embedded issues of abandonment. So, he and Innogen, they grew up as playfellows, but then she becomes, I think pretty quickly, his whole world.
“So when that’s flipped on his head [by Iachimo], you really see the parallels with what Chris was saying about Cloten,” he continued. “Cloten has gotten everything he’s wanted throughout his whole life, but Posthumus didn’t necessarily get [that] — except until Innogen came into his heart. So when he lost her, he, [like Cloten], took the worst possible road.”
Despite these emotional layers, Cymbeline is far more Game of Thrones than chamber drama, featuring many an explosive sword fight. The actors say the show is a beast to perform, even by Shakespearean standards.
“Innogen’s at a 10, man. She’s at a 10 for a lot. I go home and I’m tired,” said Edwards-Crewe. “It’s not just that she’s there a lot, she’s also at peak emotion. So that was [a challenge], building the stamina to do that.”
“I’m exhausted by the end of the show,” agreed Hall. “If I have Cymbeline the next day, I won’t go out the night before, because I know it’s going to take a lot of hydration, a lot of energy. It’s a tough mountain to climb.”
And while Allen is in fewer scenes than the other two, he says he has to fight to maintain integrity of character in the face of a similarly tough foe: comedy.
“People said Cloten was such a funny character, but then doing it and rehearsing it for months with the same people watching it constantly, it was like, ‘No, I’m not a funny person,’” he said. “So getting in front of an audience for the first time, with people laughing, I’m like ‘Okay. Stay in. Stay in. Don’t jump in there with them. Don’t get in on the joke. Just be on the path you’re on.’”
Stratford’s Cymbeline is nearing the end of its run, with closing night set for September 28. But the actors remain excited about the sheer maximalism of the text. “Whatever you like, we got it,” said Edwards-Crewe. “You like wars? We got it. You like beheadings? You like love triangles? You like eagles and literal gods?
“It’s three hours, but it’s action-packed.”
“I warn my friends before they come — I’m like, ‘it’s a long show!’” said Hall. “And then by the end, they’re all usually like: ‘it didn’t feel that long.’ That’s the greatest compliment they can give us — that we kept them hooked for three hours of crazy, not-often-done Shakespeare.”
Cymbeline runs at the Tom Patterson Theatre until September 28. Tickets are available here.
Liam Donovan
Liam is Intermission’s senior editor. He lives in Toronto. His Substack newsletter is available at loamdonovan.substack.com.
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After reading this article, I started reflecting on the evaluation criteria that the audience might be using, as implied by the phrase at the end, “it didn’t feel that long,” and the necessity of soap operas. I have a deep love for serious drama and enjoy spending several hours in the unique space of a theater, isolated from the outside world, to view things from the author’s perspective and contemplate social and philosophical issues. Honestly, I have to admit that during a live performance of one of my favorite experimental plays, Waiting for Godot, I fell asleep in the second half of the first act. However, Shakespeare’s more entertaining and melodramatic plays are exactly the kind of theater that people under the pressures of modern society need. Themes like love and love triangles, which are easy for the general public to understand, combined with exciting and flashy fight scenes, can keep the audience highly engaged. The diversity of light-hearted theater is an important issue for creators to consider, though I am concerned that more commercial dramas like these may gradually marginalize niche, experimental plays, much like the tension between commercial and arthouse films. However, these are concerns for the future. These entertaining operas can attract more audiences to engage with and appreciate theater. By giving viewers an enjoyable afternoon, they have already fulfilled their purpose.