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Faith in the gods will save the day
ORESTES
Tricyle theatre
DEMOCRACY has broken down and been replaced by mob rule. Public life has lost its dignity. Faith in the gods is diminishing and culture is giving way to materialism.
And that was just the sixth-formers packing the Tricycle on Monday night.
It was easy to see the contemporary parallels in Helen Edmundson’s ambitious adaptation of Euripides’ Athenian tragedy Orestes.
Universal human traits of ambition and greed were on display.
The story of a brother and sister who murder their mother to avenge their father’s death evoked the recent spate of honour killings, martyrdom and the cult of religious consciousness.
Bush and Blair’s recent invasion of Iraq, with its religious overtones, was clearly felt.
The giggling, text-obsessed school crowd is a tough nut to crack – as trying for actors as it is important.
For many Orestes would have been the first introduction to the theatre and actors are under great pressure to blow away the fusty preconceptions of the theatre.
The bawling shrew Electra’s (Mairead McKinley) appalling five-minute monologue was not a good start. Her howling introduction to Greek tragedy was matched by the tortured screams of Orestes (Alex Robertson) who clambered under a bed and would not come out.
The key ingredient of Greek tragedy, passion, was never really felt. Orestes’ lofty speeches on conscience and decorum felt contrived and probably left me with a skewed understanding of what Euripides was trying to do.
Edmondson has axed the traditional chorus but uses traditional costumes and used one key plot device.
In ancient Greek drama, an apparently insoluble crisis is solved by the intervention of a god, often brought on stage by an elaborate piece of equipment.
Traditionally the deus ex machina was used when an author uses some improbable, and often clumsy, plot device to work his or her way out of a difficult situation.
The deus ex machina was on display at the curtain when part of the set suddenly rotated and the muddled sequence of events came to a close. Edmundson feels the play is flawed and has removed Euripides’ ‘happy ending’. Orestes appears on the platform shouting “I am a God” and carries off the baby Hermione into oblivion.
It felt like the playwright’s erudite tinkering was on a higher plane than the actors’ performing it, but this will surely improve with time, and comes recommended.
Until Dec 2
020 7328 1000
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