SOURCE: Dumas, Alan. “Troilus Sends Bard Off to Civil War.” Rocky Mountain News (18 July 1997): 16D.

In the following review, Dumas discusses the Colorado Shakespeare Festival production of Troilus and Cressida, directed by Tom Markus. Although he finds the cast “functional,” Dumas is not impressed by the director's change of the play's setting from the Trojan War to the American Civil War.

Update the language and it would be easy to believe that Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida was written during the cynical 1960s.

There are moments of pitch-black comedy—anti-romantic, anti-war, anti-authoritarian and subversive in every respect. In this world there are no good guys, just varying degrees of corruption.

The original play was set during the Trojan War, a conflict in which, in Homer's account, it was easy to tell heroes from cowards. Not here. Years of fighting has left both sides craven in spirit. The Trojans' honor...