Reviewed by: Fixing Troilus & Cressidaby Rude Mechs Cason Murphy Fixing Troilus & CressidaPresented by Rude Mechs at ZACH Theatre Nowlin Rehearsal Studio, Austin, TX. 03 8– 31, 2018. By Kirk Lynn, adapted from William Shakespeare. Directed by Alexandra Bassiakou Shaw. Costumes and properties by Aaron Flynn. Lighting design by Stephen Pruitt. Scenic design by Amanda Perry. Sound design and original composition by Peter Stopschinski. Stage management by Madison Scott. Fight choreography by Kenny Chilton. With Catherine Grady (Helen), Crystal Bird Caviel (Cressida), Cassandra Reveles (Pandarini), Derek Kolluri (Paris), Noel Gaulin (Troilus), Rommel Sulit (Hector), Kelli Bland (Cassandra), Lauren Lane (Agamomnem), Jeff Mills (Ulysses), John Christopher (Achilles), Vincent Tomasino (Patroclus), and Mical Trejo (Calchas). When it comes to Fixing Shakespeare, it seems that the third time has been the charm. As staged in Austin last March, Fixing Troilus & Cressidaserves as the latest—and so far greatest—installment in the Rude Mechs' ongoing project of rehabilitating Shakespeare's least-produced plays (the first two outings "fixed" King Johnin 2013 and Timon of Athensin 2016). [End Page 722] The Rude Mechs are a two-decade-old feminist theater collective housed deep in the heart of Texas who have carved out a niche for themselves in the American theatrical landscape by generating edgy, contemporary theater. Yet, despite their A Midsummer Night's Dream-inspired company name, the Mechs largely avoided reinforcing the ubiquity of Shakespeare's work until 2013, when their playwright-in-residence, Kirk Lynn, started translating lines from King Johnas a morning writing exercise. The one enduring constant through the series (and one of its greatest boons) has been Lynn, who has recomposed the texts for each entry in the Fixing Shakespeareseries. Three plays on, he has refined his process of modernizing Shakespeare, as he explains in the program: I translate [each play] line by line into contemporary English—including the cursing and vulgarity—cutting the number of characters down to about 10, gender screwing them toward parity, and editing the whole thing for joy with no fidelity to the original text. There is a sincere attempt to learn how Shakespeare composes, how his ideas advance, how his characters develop, how his beautiful ideas sit so nicely with his love of dick jokes. Much like its source, Fixing Troilus & Cressidais still a play about the Trojan War. It traces the dramatic action of Shakespeare's three subplots through a set of symmetrically balanced scenes, vaulting back and forth over Troy's wall to follow the major characters in the warring factions of the Trojans and the Greeks. And like Shakespeare's work, the play also actively pivots halfway through from romance and occasional comedy to full-tilt tragedy. Unlike its source, however, that pivot here occurred after the Trojan prince Paris fired a t-shirt cannon at the audience, which showered those of us in attendance in clothing adorned with caricatures of his and Helen's faces accompanying the text "Paris loves Helen. Helen loves Paris. Love is Real." Another difference is that Fixing Troilus & Cressidahas had its cast of characters and text both reduced by half (twelve performers carry the 16,000 words of Lynn's script—cut down from Shakespeare's word count of around 27,000). In Troy, only Helen, Cressida, and Cressida's yenta-esque aunt Pandarini remain alongside select children of Priam (though the great king himself is removed)—Hector, Paris, Troilus, and Cassandra. In the even more sparsely populated Grecian camps, fewer bodies appeared—Ulysses, Achilles, Patroclus, the captured Trojan Calchas, and the brilliantly named Agamomnem, the Greek's "head honcha." The decision to cut down the dramatis personae never felt like a reminder of absence. Instead it frequently acted as a catalyst for the play, [End Page 723]forcing the major players to continually smash into one another like atoms in the large hadron collider. It also followed Shakespeare's lead in pulling the epic figures down off of their marble pedestals, humbling them and reframing their legacies in some genuinely meaningful exchanges. The men of Troy appeared alternately braggadocious and helpless. Hector eagerly anticipated taking the field for a "one-on-one battle challenge" (a turn...