The Last Days of Troy, Shakespeare's Globe - theatre review

Lily Cole makes her stage debut in a play by Simon Armitage, offering a highlights package of the main events from Greek history and legend on which it's based
The face that launched a thousand ships: Lily Cole as Helen of Troy
Henry Hitchings20 June 2014

Lily Cole makes her London stage debut in this reworking of Greek history from poet Simon Armitage. It's a vision of the siege of Troy at its most gruellingly brutal, and she plays Helen, famously "the face that launched a thousand ships".

The former model, now a humanitarian campaigner, is suitably enigmatic. Helen is often represented as an inscrutable figure, a blank canvas on to which men project their ambitions and anxieties. Cole’s performance is deliberately restrained as she glides around the stage in an almost ghostly fashion.

Her gracious movement and distant stare are just what’s required, but her voice is a little too thin — not otherworldly, just inexpressive. The story itself is a mish-mash, combining the essentials of Homer’s Iliad, snippets from his Odyssey, and even elements from Virgil’s Aeneid. The action is framed by the vivid commentary of a pedlar in modern-day Hisarlik in Turkey — where Troy used to stand. The tired and unappreciated pedlar is actually the mighty god Zeus.

Jake Fairbrother’s shaven-headed Achilles and Simon Harrison’s bristly Hector make the strongest impression. When they fight, the encounter feels genuinely bruising.

Even amid the gore, clanging swords and lofty rhetoric, Nick Bagnall’s production is at times underpowered. Yet it’s satisfyingly accessible.

Armitage has done a neat job of condensing his sources into a highlights package that captures the main historical events and the key strands of legend in which they’ve been wrapped. His writing is best when laced with scathing humour, as when the Greek commander Agamemnon remarks of Achilles: "He’ll eat anything — he’s from the north."

Until June 28 (020 7401 9919, shakespearesglobe.com)

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