Cymbeline is a play by William Shakespeare. It was shown at the Renaissancetheater in Vienna in a version by Henry Mason [German], starring Klaus Huhle, Ulrike Schlegel, Daniel Jeroma and Nora Dirisamer.

Plot:
Posthumus (Daniel Jeroma) and Imogen (Ulrike Schlegel) are very much in love, but Imogen’s father King Cymbeline (Klaus Huhle) and the Queen (Nora Dirisamer) want Imogen to marry her stepbrother/the Queen’s son Cloten (Daniel Jeroma). This is especially important since Imogen is Cymbeline’s only remaining child, her two brothers having been stolen as infants. Finally Posthumus has to flee to Italy leaving his faithful servant Pisanio (Nora Dirisamer) behind to look after Imogen.
In Italy, Posthumus mostly pines after Imogen but then, provoked by Iachimo’s (Christian Higer) misogyny he bets with him on Imogen’s fidelity, setting events into motion that are way out of his control.

Cymbeline is a lesser known Shakespeare play – and it is not surprising: it is not exactly his strongest play, at least not in the version that we saw. The production itself was mostly interesting. I actually liked the first half, but the second half drifted off into a bit of ridiculous symbolism.

I haven’t read the play, so I don’t know exactly how Henry Mason adapted it. Apart from the obvious modernisations, of course, especially in the language. There’s cursing. There’s references to botox and other things. I actually quite liked those modernisations – it is a quality that goes well with Shakespeare’s comedies [why anyone would think that Cymbeline is a tragedy, I don’t know, but apparently it was first billed as such]. But there is the odd phrase that stands out in its beauty and that made me curious about the original play.

The cast is very strong. Almost all of them have to play at least two roles and that works surprisingly well. It also lends itself to wonderful discussions: What if Cloten and Posthumus really are the same person? It would be a bit Jekyll and Hyde…

Unfortunately, the play jumps the shark a little in the second half. Suddenly there are golden teddy bears and weirdly collapsing stage elements and it all just gets a bit too symbolic for its own good. [Not that the first half was exactly symbolism-free, it was just used more moderately then.]

But since it had about 100°C in the theater and I was a bit tired, I guess it’s still high praise that I didn’t fall asleep during the second half, but was very well entertained by the sudden onset of ridicule.

Summarising: Entertaining enough.