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 The Theatreguide.London Review

Cymbeline
Barbican Theatre  November-December 2016

One of Shakespeare's most difficult (and therefore lest often revived) plays is made clear, moving and, above all, theatrically alive in this entertaining and engrossing RSC production, brought to London after a Stratford run. 

Part of Shakespeare's final period of play-making, when he evidently felt free to pay even less attention to the rules and conventions than he ever had, Cymbeline has a convoluted and episodic structure, with an overabundance of plots, counterplots, subplots and digressions – the final scene infamously contains about thirty revelations, confessions and explanations in a row, in a rush to tie up loose ends. 

But at its centre is the story of a loving couple who are separated, each to undergo a string of misadventures complicated by the attempts of others to harm them, until – no real spoiler alert here – finally being reunited. 

Director Melly Still and her cast make sense of this, and give the play an emotional core, by realising that Cymbeline is, like many other Shakespeare plays, the story of growing up. 

The lovers Innogen and Posthumus ( Bethan Cullinane and Hiran Abeysekera, both excellent in taking their characters through subtle changes) are introduced as avatars of Juliet and Romeo, caught up in the overwhelming passions of adolescent love. 

Their separate adventures and experiences are then presented as a testing and maturing process, making them ready for a more adult love and worthy of each other and of the prize withheld from them before, a happy ending. 

And this works. When Posthumus is taunted by a villain with slurs on his lady's honour and then conned into believing the invented evidence against her, we see the hotheaded youth falling into the trap of feeling without thinking. 

When the machinations of another villain (there are three or four of them, each with different agendas) force Innogen to escape, there is a hint of a girl's-own-adventure in her running off to the wilds of Wales. 

And everyone who encounters either of them, even in disguise, recognises something special and attractive in them, so that those who don't try to kill them try to help them. 

By keeping our eye and our sympathies on the two leads, director Still not only guides us through the play's plot convolutions but lets us see each step forward each one takes in the process of maturing. 

She also gives the play as clear a narrative spine and forward movement as I can imagine any director achieving. 

The all-but-full text runs well over three hours, as we have come to expect from the RSC, but it holds our attention with a clarity and energy level that rarely flag. 

Of course it doesn't all work. Director Still and designer Anna Fleischle can't resist a little messing-about with Shakespeare. 

In place of Roman Britain, the play is set in a dystopic future with some silly touches about it – a minor villain's attempt to serenade Innogen is a choreographed Temptations-style Motown trio, and imperial Rome, setting for a couple of key scenes, is imagined as the VIP room in a gay disco. 

The titular King Cymbeline is now the Queen and a few other characters undergo gender reassignments, while any scene that lends itself to the treatment is played in a vaguely appropriate foreign language, with surtitles.

Fortunately none of these changes has any real effect, for good or bad, on the play, and you can dismiss them as the kind of harmless fiddling that allows a director to think she's doing something. 

Melly Still is doing something, in finding and communicating the narrative spine and emotional core of the play, and in guiding her cast in bringing that out and never losing touch with it. 

And it is that, and not the messing-about with Shakespeare, that makes this Cymbeline such a success.

Gerald Berkowitz