Adapted and directed by Emma Rice.
Written by Carl Grose and Anna Maria Murphy
Review by Laurie Kemmett
Sitting in the Citizen’s Theatre on a Thursday evening, you might find yourself approached by a figure in an anorak, glasses, and little knitted hood. They might sit next to you (after spying on you from the stage with their binoculars), and then strike up a conversation. They might even ask you a difficult question, one that sparks sadness, or nostalgia, or a familiar warm fuzzy feeling.
“Have you ever been in love?”
Followed by the even more impossible: “What did it feel like?”
That, at its core, is what Tristan & Yseult by Emma Rice Company is all about. Love, in all its different forms, is what makes this performance come alive. And each relationship is utterly, breaktakingly believable. With our titular couple, Tristan and Yseult, there is instantaneous heated love. Tristan, played by John Leader, swaggers onstage with a power and steam that makes him instantly likeable. He’s powerful and unflappable, until he meets Yseult. Nandi Bhebhe is magnetising as Yseult, bringing a charm and playfulness that makes her tragic beginning all the more gut wrenching. Together, they’re the perfect, dizzying embodiment of young and all consuming love. Sultry and sexy, their scenes together drip with obsession.
The slowly burning type of love exists in Yseult’s orbit as well, with Cornish King Mark, portrayed by Edward Rowe. If Tristan is a wildfire, King Mark is a mountain: strong, steady, and unflinching in the face of this young bull. It would be incredibly easy to dislike Mark as the barrier between the lovers, but Rowe makes a simple task impossible as he bears Mark’s agony and adoration for Yseult in full view of the audience. Nor is this an unrequited love. Yseult clearly love the king and Tristan in equal yet differing ways. You really feel for the Irish princess as she struggles to tame her feelings. A gorgeous, quiet moment in which Yseult helps Mark shave is emblematic of devotion.
There is a love and consideration for language as well. All characters start out speaking their native language, whether that be Cornish, Irish, or French. With a little stage magic, Emma Rice as the director ensures that the text is understandable in standard English while simultaneously acknowledging the indigenous languages and cultures spanning the British Isles – something that surely wasn’t lost on the Scottish audience.
Some more quick mentions: Tom Fox is Yseult’s nurse, Brangian, cast from a similar mould to the Nurse from Romeo and Juliet. She is comedic, farcical, and the butt of the laughter for the first half, but a favour to Yseult in the second turns her into the most tragic person on the stage. It’s clever to make the audience feel culpable in not taking her seriously. Another phenomenal moment comes at the very end, from Stephanie Hockley as Whitehands. It’s tough to find a monologue where you truly hang on to every word dripping from an actor’s mouth, but Hockley held the audience in rapt attention after an aloof and cool beginning.
It feels criminal to have gotten this far without mentioning the stage design, which is reminiscent of an industrial bar/warehouse. Neon lights introduce us as being in “The Club of the Unloved”, a live band expertly guide us through the rolling emotions, and a large rig in the middle becomes a ship, a proclamation, tree tops, and the cosmos all rolled into one.
But by far the best part of this show are our little friends in their anoraks. After asking the audience whether they’ve ever been in love, they take to the stage themselves and introduce themselves as the Unloved: those who are victims of unrequited love, or who have never been loved in any way. On the surface, they serve as comedic fodder for the main action, but they truly are the crux of the show. They remind us how precious and uncertain love is, how fragile the bonds between us are. You really do root for them, and in many cases they are the characters you care for the most.
What is it like to be in love? Well, there is no universal answer. But everyone can experience it at least a little at this jaw-dropping, heart wrenching play.
Jaw-Dropping and Heart-Wrenching
Tristan & Yseult runs at The Citizen’s Theatre until 3rd October
Catch it at The Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh, from 20th – 24th October
Running time – Two hours and ten minutes with one interval
Review by Laurie (contact@corrblimey.uk)
