Tristan and Yseult - 5 stars
“Can it pull extraordinary faces? Is it usually sick on a swing? Does it spend all its time at the races, or fiddling with pieces of string?”
WH Auden's poem “O tell me the truth about love” seeks answers because only love makes us human. The queries suggest the questioner already has most of the answers and will find out... or they won’t... and that, too is love: the uncertainty.
Similarly Kneehigh Productions’ staging of the traditional Cornish love story Tristan and Yseult (pronounced Izult) races through possibilities of love and happiness but comes up (spoiler alert) somewhat empty handed; there is no definitive answer to the fiendish and infuriating randomness and fickleness of love. Yet it powers this play like a thermal spring, pitting humans against each other in a narrative of almost philosophical whimsy as much as entertainment.
That it entertains is a tribute to the zany, Pythonesque slapstick which tries hard to sabotage every single poignant moment of tenderness, but thankfully fails.
And maybe this is the truth about love; it really is sick on a swing, or vulgar, and it’s the little things that always stay with us from romantic bliss. The story is the same one mined for grand opera by Richard Wagner in 1865, but the details hardly matter; a traveller is injured helping a king defend himself but agrees to track down the invader’s sister for marriage.
He almost expires but is saved by Yseult who happens to be a paramedic, and despite realising he killed her brother (the dirty rat) she lets him off. Returning, the pair get pished on Love Potion No. 9 and consummate their passion but she keeps her wedding pledge and marries King Mark. There’s more shenanigans but the point is that despite murder, betrayal and banishment, there is sufficient faith, hope and charity (= caritas, or love) to go round. Go see it.