A one hour summation of the blood bath in the house of Atreus.
Brilliantly staged with a committed cast it takes many liberties with Euripides and updates it to the IKEA age.
This Elektra is a petulant, overgrown teenager who sulks and makes a great deal of noise. There is in her no sense of impending doom or menace. She has spent eight years not growing up and seems bound to go on that way indefinitely. Though Elektra had to carry the emotional core from the get-go.
The intensity in the original is lost here in a blizzard of the F word. Nor did any of the famous lines from the original make the transition.
Vengeance in this rendering is reduced to filial love, but in any of the Greek versions there is far more at stake than that. Since the murder of Agamemnon the land has been cursed, no rain, goats born with two hears…. The natives are indeed restless, believing the gods have condemned the land and all who there dwell because of the murder of the king. The gods must be satisfied, yet the only way to satisfy the gods is with another unrighteous murder, that of Clytemnestra and her paramour. Indeed in the Greek versions, while the deed is done, it does not atone, for that Elektra and Orestes have to leave…. pursued by the Furies, but in so doing they draw the curse off the land. If tragedy has no-winner, then this is tragedy.
These quibbles aside, it was compelling and the overall theme of the story remains.
I particularly liked the insouciant Aegisthus with his worn bathrobe. Just right. Though it took him a long time to die and it began to seem as though Orestes was counting the stabs to reach a set number. I suppose the number of blows was intended to look like a frenzied attack but it did not; rather it looked methodical, and pointless.
But the overall staging was memorable, go see it for yourself to see why.
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