Le Figaro
by Marian Thébaud , 08 March 2007

The opening sets the tone for the production. On a bare stage a stony faced group of actors, gather around an immaculately coiffed tall blond, wearing a silk dress with a purple sash. It has all the immaculate veneer of a traditional family photograph, reminiscent of Buckingham Palace in the fifties. Declan Donellan's production of Shakespeare's most Elizabethan play, is a production for our own violent times. He presents this action packed play, as a savagely dark powerful political drama. Using the simplest of sets, with no special effects, he deliberately avoids any facile exoticism, allowing the action to flow with absolute clarity, helped by a uniformly strong cast and Judith Greenwood's subtle lighting effects.

Casting the excellent Tom Hiddleston in the dual role of the banished husband, Posthumus, and Cloten, the queen's arrogant son, two starkly contrasting characters, introduces a note of humour and a little lightness into the production. Hiddleston switches seamlessly from unbearable, sulky little English nobleman to humbled exile. Jodie McNee is a fresh and youthful Imogen. Fidelity, chastity and faith are so much harder to portray than vice, and she succeeds in bringing the virtuous princess to life, creating a flesh and blood character.

Gwendoline Christie is a subtly perfidious queen, who might have stepped straight from a fairy story, or been the model for the Queen in Alice in Wonderland. Guy Flanagan is a traitor, with all the airs of a City gent. The whole company bring rigour and precision to the production, working tightly together, like the fingers of one hand.