Cymbeline is fundamentally a play about storytelling. Again and again, central conflicts of the play are shaped by narration, from Iachimo's convincing lies that trigger Posthumus' violent jealousy to the Queen's and Cloten's narrative of British isolationism that causes the war
between Britain and Rome. This central focus on story telling is also reflected in the first scene of the play, where two unnamed narrators tell us about what has happened so far, who the main characters are, and how we should feel about them. We took this scene as a cue: In our
production, these two turn into narrators who guide us through the play, picking up the roles of different characters that significantly impact the momentum of the story.

The focus on the construction and the mechanics of stories also extends to the structure of the play itself. Although formally a tragedy, it defies genre labels, mixing high tragedy with farcical comedy and absurdist plot twists at every turn. Almost a pastiche of popular Shakespeare plays, it combines equal parts Othello and As You Like It, King Lear, Julius Caesar, and Much Ado About Nothing. Likewise, the play seems little concerned with realism and plausibility, at points even questioning the logic of its own fiction and undermining its characters' attempts to create a cohesive narrative. For example, in a scene in the last act that is equally stunning and confusing, Posthumus recounts for the audience the battle that we have just seen acted on stage, only to be challenged by a soldier whether all of this really happened: “This was strange chance” he comments laconically after hearing Posthumus’ rousing tale.

By drawing the attention of the audience to its own narrative fault lines, the play invites us to question whether we are inclined to accepts the fictions it presents. With our production we want to explore how we might make sense of these fictions and how they might speak to an audience four hundred years after its first production.