Cymbeline at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at Shakespeare’s Globe – review

Neither one of the Bard’s most poetic plays, nor his most profound, Cymbeline is a bingo card of Shakespearian tropes: star-crossed lovers, banishment, hidden identities, cross-dressing, lost twins, poison that is actually a sleeping draught, testing a wife’s virtuousness. The list goes on. It’s an odd choice for the Sam Wanamaker, but one supposes they must get bored of playing the big hits all the time and fancied themselves a challenge.

The plot in this gender-swapped production begins simply enough: secretly married star-crossed lovers Innogen and Posthumus are to be parted by the queen’s banishment of the latter, who is too low-born, to Rome. When Posthumus arrives, she lavishly espouses her wife’s virtues and is quickly challenged by the swaggering Iachimo. They make a bet that Iachimo can’t woo Innogen, and off he goes to Britain to try. Failing entirely to charm her, Iachimo decides to lie anyway, causing Posthumus to order her maid-servant to murder Innogen.

There are various other plots and sub-plots – an impending war between Britain and Rome which seems by the by, an evil Duke who wishes to insert his son, Cloten, into the royal family – but that’s the general gist. Of the first act, that is.

The second act involves Innogen disguising as a boy and taking refuge with a mother and twins who, she’ll find out later, are her long-lost siblings. Meanwhile, Cloten decides to go find Innogen, disguised, we are to believe, as Posthumus. He loses his head, is then mistaken for Posthumus, the Romans show up, a war happens, the Duke dies… Some other stuff.

Considering the utter chaos of the plot, we’re spared any visual chaos by Basia Bińkowska’s two-tone design: British in beige and the Romans in red. Strips of cream animal hide decorate the back wall, and the Wanamaker’s iconic candelabras do much of the rest. While I can see this simplicity of design might have seemed an attempt at taming an unruly narrative, it has the opposite effect: if the plot doesn’t make much sense, at least give us a feast for the eyes.

Director Jennifer Tang has made the decision to gender-swap, so where Cymbeline was previously a king, she is now a queen, the evil step-queen is now an evil duke, and Posthumus is now a woman. With a few clever tweaks of the script, it works perfectly well: while the Romans appear to worship Jupiter, the British, under a matriarch, worship the earth mother Gaia, and so it becomes a kind of battle of the sexes. A shame that Cymbeline is such a weak leader, mostly under the thumb of her evil duke husband. But Iachimo’s nonsense machismo on Posthumus’ arrival in Rome, and the whiny incel Cloten amidst a court of strong women give strength to this new interpretation.

Gabrielle Brooks’ Innogen is truly the star, fearsome and tender in turn, and one wonders why it is called Cymbeline and not Innogen (akin to the Globe’s 2016 production of Imogen). Pierro Niel-Mee’s Iachimo is slippery and hateful, and Jordan Mifsúd’s Cloten is unbearably uncool. What really carries this performance, though, is every character’s ability to find the funny wherever it may be lurking. In the final scene, when Cymbeline (Martina Laird) is informed by Pisania (Amanda Bright) of her husband’s death and told that on his deathbed, he admitted he never loved her, actually he hated her, the audience erupts with laughter. That is a serious comic feat.

But if a lesser-loved, mishmash, three-hour, tragi-comic Shakespeare isn’t going to sell it for you, you should absolutely just go for the music. Led by composer Laura Moody, the musical trio, completed by Heidi Heidelberg and Angela Wai Nok Hui, are mesmerising all on their own. Glass cloches hang from the ceiling as bells, a bowl of beads is gently stirred while a percussive, somber cello rings out; stones smack stones, resting on chest and throat as the three voices warble and mewl in dissonant unison. They give depth and flavour to a mediocre script. That said, I would happily return to see the soundtrack performed sans play.