Star rating: N/A (The Guest Pigeon who writes in Baskerville opted out of the numerical grading system)
In the hands of director Annabelle Higgins, Fletcher’s and Shakespeare’s The Two Noble Kinsmen, based on Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale, reaches its tragicomic potential and provides welcome refreshment amongst the innumerable productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Importance of Being Earnest which are wont to grace the gardens of Oxford’s colleges.
Although the performance takes place as Trinity Term has just started, the weather is sunny and the production well-organised. As I arrive at my seat, adorned with Morris dancers’ bells, Hannah Wei creates a merry atmosphere as a number of old tunes skip forth from her penny whistle. It is clear that Higgins’ taste is classical even before the appearance of wine-skins, swords, and leather armour, though her edition mercilessly breaks the iambic pentameter with great frequency.
The play opens with a pastoral chorus set to music by Owen Robinson, elegantly conducted by Phoenix Solti. It is the first time we hear the mellifluous voice and eminent musicality of Paloma Díaz as the Jailer’s Daughter, whose continual singing can be relied upon to distil her increasing madness into moving moments of emotional clarity. We are soon introduced to the titular characters. One is a charmingly boyish Palamon, played in a North-American accent by Ryan Silien, the other an initially bemusing Arcite, played by Josephine Haarhoff-Nargi, whose variously contorted face and almost Victorian style of delivery, featuring frequent elision and a hexa-syllabic i-ma-gi-na-ti-on, provides expressive clarity and elicits considerable nostalgia. Silien fully embodies the drama with a disarming artlessness, the superficiality of which, though slightly camp, gives an impression of youthful energy rather than of poor technique. Haarhoff-Nargi’s Arcite is more calculated and observing (though no less camp), and more acerbic in his jibes than furious. The dynamic between the two is one of a sprightly hilarity, contrasting with the greater emotional maturity of the sisters-in-law Emilia and Hippolyta. Imogen Green’s Emilia has too strong a moral compass for womanhood and thus stays ever maidenly, supremely innocuous though not quite innocent. Her tears flow for her own unfortunate position as the object of the kinsmen’s double affection and for the cruelty of the world. Rowena Sears as Hippolyta emerges as the most likely candidate for an acting career: her unparallelled instinct for Jacobean text, unrelenting Meisnerian focus, absolute truth of word and action, striking, faintly pre-Raphaelite appearance (with flowing red hair), and natural nobility of movement and posture make her mesmerising to watch even as she stands observing the action. More magical than brawny, her dread Amazonian has the appeal of a fairy queen.
The interval coincides with twilight, and the air bites shrewdly. Cast and audience shiver. Higgins exhorts us to brave the cold. The stakes are raised; dilly-dallying will no longer be tolerated. A sense of urgency and foreboding as Phoenix Solti’s lighting enchants the stage. Díaz’ Jailer’s Daughter is lost in the forest, dancing and sprinting to keep her heart and body warm. She joins Lily Zhang’s Schoolmaster and her pupils in a Morris, expertly accompanied on the melodeon by a radiant Saul Bailey. Green’s Emilia is desperate to enjoy herself; Sears’ Hippolyta looks prepared to slay the whole company. We laugh at Emilia as she gazes at Arcite’s and Palamon’s ill-fashioned portraits; she joins in our laughter, aware of the absurdity of her plight, but tears prick behind.
Tragedy finally arrives in the fifth and final act. Three prayers. Faint humming. We feel the presence of Chaucer. Haarhoff-Nargi’s classical sensibility no longer seems eccentric; her approach is not only correct but necessary for Arcite’s prayer to Mars. Arcite himself best describes his struggle:
I am in labour
To push your name, your ancient love, our kindred
Out of my memory, and i’ th’ selfsame place
To seat something I would confound.
Tears stream down Haarhoff-Nargi’s cheeks. The struggle is cosmic. Mars turns green Neptune and the stage into purple; the vastness of his divine power shakes Arcite so deeply that the blood of the fallen seems to contaminate the planet as well as the sea. Haarhoff-Nargi proves herself a timeless vessel for the heaviest lines of the play:
O great corrector of enormous times,
Shaker of o’er-rank states, thou grand decider
Of dusty and old titles, that heal’st with blood
The Earth when it is sick, and cur’st the world
O’ th’ pleurisy of people, I do take
Thy signs auspiciously, and in thy name
To my design march boldly.
The contrast between the accents and attitudes of Arcite and Palamon, which not long ago produced much amusement, now becomes fateful. Arcite in addressing Mars became a giant; for Venus kneels a tiny Palamon. Silien’s prayer sweetly flutters about, his eyes glistening with hopeful youth:
Hail, sovereign queen of secrets, who hast power
To call the fiercest tyrant from his rage
And weep unto a girl; that hast the might
E’en with an eye-glance to choke Mars’s drum
And turn th’ alarm to whispers.
Arcite bows to death, Palamon to life, and Emilia to virtue. The spirit of Iphigenia seems to reside in Green as she stands shivering and weeping at Diana’s altar, decked in white, one with the silver hind in her hands. Arcite wins the duel but dies shortly afterwards in the embrace of his beloved Palamon and Emilia. No fake blood, no affected sighs and groans, only love and a request for forgiveness and a last kiss.
The beauty of tragicomedy is rightly celebrated with a closing Morris. We clap and thaw.
(Hertford & Mansfield Garden Play, 9 May 2026)
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