Shakespeare's play about two lovers in a time of war--the Trojan War, to be exact--is currently playing itself out at the American Place Theater in a new production presented by Theatre For A New Audience and directed by Britain's eminent Shakespeare man, Sir Peter Hall. All your favorite characters from The Illiad are here--Ulysses, Achilles, Hector, Aeneas, Agammemnon--along with the star-crossed lovers Troilus (of Troy, obviously) and Cressida (soon to be of Greece).

But don't mistake Troilus and Cressida for a historically grounded Romeo and Juliet; the love story is peripheral at best. And, for a while, so is the war. Set during a brief peacetime when the Greeks and Trojans are al[...]