Lily Cole as Helen of Troy. Or Sparta… Depending on which side you’re on. (Photo by Jonathan Keenan)
The Last Days of Troy at Shakespeare’s Globe (which stages new plays as well as the Bard’s) is an epic telling of an epic story. It has a foot in the present that brings the horrors and dramas of love and war even more starkly to life.
The classics can be hard to follow, but Simon Armitage’s re-telling of Homer’s Iliad has a pace and clarity that keeps you gripped for the full 2.5+ hours. You may already know a thing or two about the characters; Helen of Troy, the Trojan Horse, the Greek gods Zeus and Athene. Even if you don’t, the 2014 version of Zeus — now a homeless god peddling trinkets at a tourist spot – makes an accessible introduction. So much has changed since then. Yet so much has stayed the same.
Read More