TROILUS AND CRESSIDA - BBC

General Details, Synopsis & Cast Details

A BBC TELEVISION PRODUCTION FULLSCREEN PRESENTATION
DVD REGION 2+4 PAL - Certificate 12 - Running Time Approx. 190 minutes
©BBC Television in association with Time-Life - All Rights Reserved
Originally Transmitted: 7th November 1981
COLOUR DVD PAL FORMAT - LANGUAGE: English - SUBTITLES: English (S.D.H.)
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"Lechery, lechery; still, wars and lechery; nothing else holds fashion: a burning devil take them!"
The bitter Trojan War drags on - the Greeks blame Achilles' apathy for low morale, while Troy's hero Hector challenges one of the enemies to a personal duel. And after her father exchanges Cressida for a Trojan prisoner, the war becomes personal for her distraught lover Troilus.
Jonathan Miller pitches his acclaimed production of this part-history, part-tragedy between satire and savage farce, highlighting Shakespeare's cynical standpoint where love is mocked and heroism made absurd.
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Enter the Prologue armed
PROLOGUE:
"In Troy there lies the scene. From Isles of Greece
The princes orgulous, their high blood chafed,
Have to the port of Athens sent their ships,
Fraught with ministers and instruments
Of cruel war. Sixty-and-nine, that wore
their crownets, from th'Athenian bay . . ."
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ANTON LESSER - SUZANNE BURDEN - CHARLES GRAY - BENJAMIN WHITROW AND JOHN SHRAPNEL
DIRECTED BY JONATHAN MILLER - PRODUCED BY SHAUN SUTTON
William Shakespeare Hys Most Excellent and Famous Tragedie of
TROILUS AND CRESSIDA
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DVD Regions (2+4) ~ Certificate 12 - Running Time Approx. 190 minutes
©BBC TV Production in association with Time Life Television - All Rights Reserved
Produced & Distributed by DD HE/Simply Home Entertainment for A Superior Quality Reproduction
Originally Transmitted: 7th November 1981 - COLOUR ~ DVD PAL FORMAT
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DRAMATIS PERSONAE
Charles Gray as Pandarus - Anton Lesser as Troilus - Tony Steedman as Aeneas - Suzanne Burden as Cressida - Max Harvey as Alexander - Peter Walmsley as Servant to Troilus - Vernon Dobtcheff as Agamemnon - Geoffrey Chater as Nestor - Benjamin Whitrow as Ulysses - Bernard Brown as Menelaus
Anthony Pedley as Ajax - Kenneth Haigh as Achilles - Jack Birkett as Thersites (as The Incredible Orlando) - Simon Cutter as Patroclus - Esmond Knight as Priam - John Shrapnel as Hector - Elayne Sharling as Cassandra - David Firth as Paris - Paul Moriarty as Diomedes - David Kinsey as Servant to Paris - Ann Pennington as Helen - Peter Whitbread as Calchas ` Merelina Kendall as Andromache - Cornelius Garrett as Margarelon - Tony Portacio as Helenus - Peter J. Cassell as Deiphobus
~ et al . . . ~
Directed by Jonathan Miller
Adapted from William Shakespeare's original play
A Brief Historie of the Play
The story of the siege of Troy was the main subject of one of the greatest surviving works of classical literature, Homer's Iliad; probably Shakespeare read George Chapman's 1598 translation of Books 1-2 and 7-11. It also figures prominently in Virgil's Aenid and Ovid's Metamorphoses, both of which Shakespeare knew and used . . . Troilus and Cressida shows how a war caused by one love affair destroys another.