The bitter Trojan War drags on – the Greeks blame Achilles’ apathy for low morale, while Troy’s hero Hector challenges one of the enemies to a personal duel. And after her father exchanges Cressida for a Trojan prisoner, the war becomes personal for her distraught lover Troilus.

Jonathan Miller pitches his acclaimed production of this part-history, part-tragedy between satire and savage farce, highlighting Shakespeare’s cynical standpoint where love is mocked and heroism made absurd.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE:

In credits order

• Director: Jonathan Miller
• Produced: Jonathan Miller
• Adapted: William Shakespeare’s original play

The story of the siege of Troy was the main subject of one of the greatest surviving works of classical literature, Homer’s Iliad; probably Shakespeare read George Chapman’s 1598 translation of Books 1-2 and 7-11. It also figures prominently in Virgil’s Aenid and Ovid’s Metamorphoses, both of which Shakespeare knew and used . . . Troilus and Cressida ,/b>shows how a war caused by one love affair destroys another.