For even the most dedicated of Shakespeare audiences, Troilus & Cressida is likely the great unknown. A behemoth 3+ hour text with a sprawling cast of characters and an epic, messy story that is literally the stuff of legends- there are lots of reasons why this is one of the canon’s least performed works. Lack of familiarity leads to easy confusion with dense, poetic text and the play’s chaotic structure gives the viewer little to hold on to as an anchor. Would-be leading characters take over the narrative only to disappear for large swaths of the next act, replaced by yet another could-be star as the title characters see their personal story drowned by all-encompassing war and bigger personalities. There is no clear genre, no easy moral, no convenient soliloquies declaring the bad guys the bad guys.

Shakespeare Bash’d is a straightforward classical company. They do text-focused work with few cuts and rarely any bells or whistles to distract a wandering mind. Consistently unafraid of challenging plays, the Bash’d team knows they’ve taken on something in Troilus & Cressida that asks a lot of their audience. You have to focus, you have to persevere, you have to put two and two together when sometimes the script doesn’t give you four (or it did and you missed it because not even the most trained Shakespeare ear can catch every word of an unfamiliar text). But if I had to pick anyone in Toronto theatre to follow unto a breach this daunting, I’d choose James Wallis. The Bash’d co-artistic director at the helm of this production never fails to bring essential clarity and focus to his work, interpreting the text with modern eyes and an artful balance that keeps the play off the pedestal without trying to fix its foibles.

Wallis’ key partner in unlocking the power of Troilus & Cressida is his longtime collaborator Jennifer Dzialoszynski. Tasked with Ulysses’ long speeches and mercurial nature, Dzialoszynski’s onstage performance is undoubtedly one of the play’s strongest but it’s her work as both fight and intimacy director that really make the production click. The two physical direction roles are heartbreakingly intertwined as violence manifests in myriad ways throughout the play. Hyper-specific body placements and the smallest nuances of tone brilliantly differentiate a stirring spectrum of intimate moments from the tenderness in the title characters’ relationship (bolstered by excellent chemistry between Deivan Steele and Breanne Tice) to a deeply disturbing act four sequence centered on Tice’s straight faced and steady Cressida. The physical violence is perhaps even more affecting as dynamic and inventive fights descend into increasing brutality, climaxing in the most visceral onstage death in memory. The production’s violence, executed with skill and intensity at full speed by the vibrant ensemble, casts a blinding spotlight on the male aggression that permeates the play. While a love story is at Troilus & Cressida‘s heart, its tragedy lies in how completely that hope can be smothered by hate.