Review: TRISTAN & YSEULT, Bristol Old Vic

We've all been members of 'The Club of the Unloved' where tales of unrequited love and broken hearts are the norm. In Kneehigh's world, this is a kind of back alley jazz club and the initial setting for the epic love story of Tristan & Yseult.

Not that we stay still for very long in what has become Kneehigh's seminal production. This is the play that galvanised their success, plucked Emma Rice out and installed her as a director to watch. This tour then, feels like something of a lap of honour if, as Rice suggests, it is to be it's last outing.

Tristan & Yseult is Kneehigh at their finest. It throws off all the shackles that tend to confine and constrict others and playfully tells us this medieval Celtic story. Using an almost Greek-style chorus of the unloved, we are treated to the tale of King Mark of Cornwall and his troubled Kingdom. Styled as birdwatchers, the unloved chorus are all of us, looking in on the action, hoping for a chance one day to take centre stage.

As the central pair of lovers, Dominic Marsh as Tristan and Hannah Vassallo as Yseult give us the right blend of passion and determination. Their beautifully choreographed dance after their first meeting is a highlight.

What Rice and the Kneehigh ensemble have managed here is to find the humanity in what could feel like an unwieldy and irrelevant medieval story of conquering Kingdoms and love triangles. Nowhere is this more evident than in Niall Ashdown's Brangian, an innocent maid where the laughs come thick and fast at first, only to replaced by one of the most unexpectedly tender moments in the whole show.

Bill Mitchell's set remains a wonder with its central mast and circular plinth, it gives the company everything they need to generously tell the story. It's a sumptuous visual feast, whether it is bellowing with a ship's sails or giving us the intimacy of a wedding bed.

If this is the final outing of this magical show, then it signs off on a high and judging from the rapturous reaction at the curtain call, it is most certainly not unloved.

Tristan & Yseult at Bristol Old Vic until 15 July

Photo Credit: Steve Tanner

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