SOURCE: Murray, David. “All Sweat and Tangas: Theatre.” The Financial Times (6 December 1996): 17.

In the following review, Murray assesses the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Troilus and Cressida, directed by Ian Judge. Murray's review is mixed as he finds fault with Joseph Fiennes's whining Troilus and with Victoria Hamilton's shallow Cressida, but praises several of the other male roles and states that as a whole the production offered a “defensible” take on the play.

Ian Judge's RSC production of Troilus and Cressida has come up from Stratford-on-Avon to the Barbican. Troilus is not among the favoured Shakespeare plays that come round regularly (it is perhaps thought to be too raunchy for A-levels), so we want it to be lucid and not overly kinked. That is what Judge gives us: a near- complete text, mostly well spoken, in a staging that has its epic passages and some teasing slants.

The...