Troilus and Cressida (Delacorte)
Closed 2h 50m
Troilus and Cressida (Delacorte)
81

Troilus and Cressida (Delacorte) NYC Reviews and Tickets

81%
(148 Ratings)
Positive
94%
Mixed
6%
Negative
0%
Members say
Great acting, Great staging, Ambitious, Absorbing, Intense

About the Show

Tony-winning director Daniel Sullivan returns to Shakespeare in the Park with this rarely produced play. Both warriors and lovers play hard to get in the Bard's surprisingly modern epic set in ancient Greece. 

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Show-Score Member Reviews (148)

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PMF
57 Reviews | 22 Followers
95
Absorbing, Great acting, Great staging, Epic

See it if you love TROY, THE ILIAD, or obscure Shakespeare! The most contemporarily-spoken Shakespeare I've seen in a long time!

Don't see it if You object to homosexuality on stage, you're a Shakespeare purist, or you hate loud noises!

140 Reviews | 33 Followers
90
Entertaining, Great staging, Great acting, Slow, Thought-provoking

See it if You love Shakespeare and enjoy a contemporary take on classics

Don't see it if You don't like Shakespeare, get annoyed with different interpretations of classic texts

121 Reviews | 31 Followers
90
Absorbing, Thrilling, Genius, Great acting, Great staging

See it if You want to see the best production of Troilus and Cressida you'll ever see. If you want to see Shakespeare modernization at its best.

Don't see it if You hate Shakespeare? If the guns and violence will be triggering for you.

175 Reviews | 20 Followers
89
Epic, Cinematic, Intense, Riveting, Great staging

See it if you enjoy fresh, modern stagings of Shakespeare

Don't see it if you're more of a Shakespeare traditionalist

541 Reviews | 343 Followers
89
Great staging, Great acting, Riveting, Intense, Relevant

See it if You want to see an excellent production of an underrated W.S. play. Terrific direction by Daniel Sullivan, great fight scenes & fine acting.

Don't see it if you're uncomfortable with scenes of warfare & blood.

457 Reviews | 101 Followers
87
Absorbing, Ambitious, Great acting, Great staging, Must see

See it if You have had problems with this play in the past. You like tight, well acted, professional productions. You suffered through Taming...

Don't see it if You cant take the sweltering heat. You dont like loud sounds and faux warfare. Lots of semiautomatics.

139 Reviews | 42 Followers
85
Entertaining, Great acting, Epic, Great staging, Intense

See it if You want to see Shakespeare performed in a contemporary setting with actors in modern dress.

Don't see it if You don't want to see imaginatively staged version of this well produced show.

186 Reviews | 37 Followers
85
Ambitious, Absorbing, Entertaining, Great acting, Great staging

See it if you like Shakespeare & a great ensemble cast all around. Pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this production of a "problem play."

Don't see it if you don't like loud noises/discussion of warfare or simulated gunfights, you want to see one of Shakespeare's better written plays.

Critic Reviews (34)

The New York Times
August 9th, 2016

"The new Public Theater production of this relatively obscure Shakespeare play gets many things right, but its biggest triumph is to make us reconsider the reputation of a work derided for haphazard jumps from romantic declarations to military strategizing, from bawdy banter to moral questioning...A vivid, fleet-footed rendering by the director Daniel Sullivan and his adept cast, who weave the play’s disparate strands into a surprisingly effective whole."
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Time Out New York
August 9th, 2016

"Daniel Sullivan’s marvelously intelligent and thoughtful modern-dress production of Shakespeare’s darkly comic problem play...Drenched in irony and whipping in tone from bawdy comedy to near-nihilistic tragedy, 'Troilus and Cressida' offers little by way of plot or sympathetic characters...But its language is richly rewarding, and its understanding of military and sexual politics, elucidated in Sullivan’s staging, feels trenchantly modern."
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New York Magazine / Vulture
August 9th, 2016

"What scholars call a 'problem' play...What’s a Shakespeare festival to do? First, hire the director Sullivan, an expert de-muddler, to offer the best case possible. Next, hire actors who, at a minimum, can make the verse flow clean. Then, put the director and cast together to develop characterizations that ring fresh and clear...Making these story lines, or parts of them, vibrate with tension is quite a victory, but doing so cannot win the war of 'Troilus and Cressida.' It is still a blur,"
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Variety
August 9th, 2016

"Director Daniel Sullivan prudently races through the boring stuff to get to the second act, in which he sends two armies of handsome, able-bodied actors into homoerotic battle to fight the suddenly sexy Trojan War…Under Sullivan’s direction, the seven-year war never lets up. Even as scenes are being played on stage, soldiers roam the theater aisles and do battle just outside the non-existent walls of the stark industrial set."
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The Hollywood Reporter
August 9th, 2016

"Sullivan, abetted by an excellent ensemble, does about as well as one can with this difficult play. He stages the complicated action with fast-paced vigor and clarity, and imbues the violent battle scenes with visceral intensity...The plotting is mind-numbingly intricate…That it registers as powerfully as it does is a testament to the fine performances...This is a 'Troilus and Cressida' in which the play is very much the thing, and that, ironically, is its chief weakness."
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AM New York
August 9th, 2016

"The play is choppy and long (running three hours). But Daniel Sullivan, who has directed many shows in the park, delivers a smart production that views the ancient conflict from a contemporary standpoint…The battle scenes are built up with fight choreography, weaponry and splattered blood…As Cressida, Ismenia Mendes draws a full character arc out of a problematic role."
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NY1
August 12th, 2016

"Sullivan’s modern dress production manages to smooth over the tonal shifts quite effectively, staging the romantic scenes with great fervor and the comedy as pointed satire...Directorial brilliance can only go so far without an able cast, and this one comprised of veterans and rookies is sublime...This is not an easy play, but given our own unsolvable problems echoing global conflicts today, there is much gold to be mined here."
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Theatermania
August 9th, 2016

"This vital production set in modern times is exactly what Shakespeare intended…This is Shakespeare at his most subversive and in a dynamite production like this, it is absolutely thrilling to behold…Thanks to specific and fleshy performances, we get to intimately understand each character's relationship to the conflict…By setting his production in this century, Sullivan draws a none-too-subtle parallel between the protracted conflict in 'The Illiad' and America's own seemingly endless wars."
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