DAILY CAMERA: Review: No tidy resolution to Colorado Shakespeare Festival’s ‘Troilus and Cressida’

(Above: Carolyn Holding and Christopher Joel Onken play the title characters. Photo by Jennifer M Koskinen.)

The key question: Is the Colorado Shakespeare Festival‘s ” Troilus and Cressida ” worth your time and money?

The answer: Emphatically yes.

But be aware in advance of what you won’t get. You won’t get a neat, tidy resolution. You won’t get honor rewarded or love everlasting. And you won’t get a lot of Troilus and Cressida themselves.

For those new to this rarely-performed tragedy — which opened Saturday at the Mary Rippon Outdoor Theatre at the University of Colorado and runs through Aug. 6 — it may come as a surprise that Troilus and Cressida are supporting players in their own story. That story comes in the midst of the Trojan War, now in its seventh interminable year. The brief romance and the larger conflict share a common theme: promises made and broken, with honor tarnished and reputation nothing more than a way to get good men killed.

Caitlin Ayer’s set communicates this instantly. Above the great gate of Troy, instead of the legendary “topless towers of Ilium,” we get towerless tops – worn and rusty peaks of metal that are torn off partway down, with no supporting foundation. The ravages of war are apparent, but the stronger qualities beneath have decayed.

Two storylines intersect. In the foreground…read the full review here.