Cymbeline, Directors Comments
Families and Foes
I had never seen or read Cymbeline before I agreed to produce it. I said yes because Kneehigh is cavalier by nature, because I am strangely fascinated by fate and also because it felt like a challenge. I liked the fact that it is so rarely performed, I liked the fact that I had no preconceptions, I liked that it is known as a ‘problem’ play and no one seems to know what it is. “Is it a comedy or a tragedy?” I ask. “A history or a pastoral?” “Mmmm” comes the response, “perhaps a little of all these things”.
A play that breaks the rules, that doesn’t seem to care what it is. Perfect Kneehigh material!
Then I read it. Or should I say, tried to read it. The language is tough, dense and archaic. My modern, sluggish brain struggled with the complexity of the plot and the long descriptions of emotion. No one talks about how hard Shakespeare can be, what an alien form his work has become. I plough on. Slowly, the fog lifts, the stories emerge and blow me! There is nothing archaic or alien about it. It is a glorious mix of contradictions! It is edgy and touching, ridiculous and heart breaking, a soap opera and an epic. High comedy sits next to tragedy, magical realism nestles in beside political intrigue and nature clashes against the urban. It is indeed, all things.
But for me, Cymbeline is a fairy tale. It is about where we come from, who we are and how we find our way home. It is about family, but not a sentimental notion of family, no. This story tackles stepfamilies and dead parents, abduction and surrogate care. This is about families, as we know them, damaged, secretive, surprising and frustrating. Cymbeline, the King and father, is lost at the start. He is in the fog. His first wife is dead and his two boys snatched as babies. His surviving daughter Imogen is a mystery to his tired soul. He is in stasis, where nothing can grow and nothing can regenerate. He is Sleeping Beauty waiting for an awakening.
Outside the palace is a whole world of otherness. A world where the lost boys learn to hunt and sing, where a foster father provides more love and affection than the biological father could even dream of. Here is a world where life is hard and threatening, where being an outsider means feeling you never belong. They are tested like so many princes in storybooks, learning through hardship to be independent, fair, fearless and compassionate - essential virtues for would-be leaders.
And then there is Imogen: heroine, daughter and woman. She sets out into the woods like Goldilocks, Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood before her. She is looking for her man but of course finds much more, her brothers, her origins, herself. She is vivid colour to Cymbeline’s monochrome; she is the irresistible force of change.
This remarkable story charts a long day in which demons are faced, truths revealed and threats fought. Imogen and Posthumus have their young love tested, evil is vanquished, the lost boys are returned as men to the comfort of their childhood beds and Cymbeline awakens and becomes a victor, a King and most importantly, a dad.
I now love this story. I love that it has revealed itself to me slowly in delicious, technicoloured layers of meaning and delight. It is like a patchwork of fears, dreams and memories. I want this production to celebrate the child in all of us. I want it to remind us of night terrors and knitted blankets; first love and dressing up; hot chocolate on a rainy Sunday; late night chats with beloved siblings; being thrown in the air by your dad; being carried in from the car after a long drive; getting lost on Westward Ho! beach and smelling your Mum’s never-used perfume. It should remind us of the dawning realisation of immortality, of grief and hope in equal intense measures. So, here’s to belonging. Here’s to fighting for who you are and who you might become. Here’s to getting lost and being found, to dads and mums and families in all their wondrous, cracked, comforting glory!
Emma Rice
Director of Cymbeline, Artistic Director of Kneehigh Theatre
