Cruel & Tender

Cruel and Tender – written by British playwright Martin Crimp after Trachiniae, Sophocles’ rarely performed Greek tragedy about the abuses of war circa 430 BC- is the kind of EU collaboration that could easily become an almighty mess.

Two years in the planning, it’s the first English-language production from Swiss-born director Luc Bondy, renowned for his services to German-speaking theatre, boasts a multi-national company (led by New Zealander Kerry Fox) and involves no fewer than five European arts bodies – the Young Vic and Chichester Festival in the UK, Bondy’s own Vienna-based Weiner Festwochen, the German Ruhrfestpiele Recklinghausen and French Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord. A complicated credits list, yes, but if ever there were a stage production that disproves the rule about too many cooks spoiling the broth, this is it.

In Crimp’s version, stunningly directed by Bondy with an ever-present sense of foreboding, Sophocles’ ancient Trachis is successfully swapped for a non-specific suburban setting near an airport (Paul Arditti’s rumbling of jet engines a menacing aural backdrop to Richard Peduzzi’s soulless domestic set), and instead of Deianeira and Heracles we have Fox’s Amelia who nervously awaits the return of her General husband (played by Joe Dixon) from an immoral war in Africa.

The mythological Hydra has its modern counterpoint in the ‘war on terror’, whose many heads The General frantically seeks to chop off even as his wife realises that the more he fights, the more he invites its regeneration.

For the majority of the two-hour proceedings (played through without an interval), Fox’s Amelia commands our attention. Initial anxiety for her husband’s safety is supplanted by jealousy after the arrival of Laela (Georgina Ackerman), one of the spoils of war, and later by waves of violent revenge and guilt. It’s a stunning performance.

Fox more than rises to the heightened and epic demands of Bondy’s production, as do all of the supporting cast including Michael Gould’s smoothly chameleon messenger Jonathan, Toby Fisher’s ‘tiny terrorist’ of a son, and Crimp’s version of the chorus of Trachis women, a trio of ever-watchful and vaguely sinister servants (with Jessica Claire standing out as a mincing manicurist).

Amelia and her husband never appear on stage together. After Fox’s staggeringly powerful exit – applying her own blood like lipstick as the lights dim – the final scene catching up with The General occasionally feels overlong and overwrought, but Dixon is memorable as the once-great man, now reduced to wheelchair and catheter, who hasn’t lost his capacity for vengeance, lust or self-justification.

Cruel and Tender it is, as well as shocking and unforgettable. Bravo.

– Terri Paddock

Cruel and Tender runs at the Young Vic until 15 May 2004, taking a break for European dates, then returning, from 17 June to 10 July 2004, as the theatre’s final show before a two-year, £12.5 million rebuild. Later in the summer, it moves to Chichester, running from 4 August to 4 September 2004.