A mash-up of styles and the removal of Apollo makes for an unsatisfying tragedy
Orestes
Tricycle Theatre, London NW6
I suppose if a play has been a hit since 408BC, it will have weathered a few ropey interpretations. On this basis, it probably doesn't matter that Orestes by Euripides is currently undergoing a rather uneven outing at the hands of Shared Experience at the Tricycle Theatre.
The play, adapted by Helen Edmundson, has been shorn to a 90-minute piece set in a bedroom. It opens with Orestes' sister Electra (Mairead McKinley) telling us what has been going on; namely that she and Orestes have murdered their mother Clytemnestra to avenge the death of their father Agamemnon, who was bumped off by Mum in particularly nasty style when he came back from the Trojan war (surprised in the bath, netted and butchered). Orestes and Electra, the avenging "matricides", themselves now face capital punishment. Unless, that is, they can be saved by their uncle Menelaos (Agamemnon's brother and Helen's husband), himself just back from Troy.
The trouble about squeezing all this into the length of a Disney feature is that Orestes is trickier than Snow White, and Edmundson has set up some significant problems for herself not only by insisting on such brevity but also by cutting out dramatic elements such as the Chorus and the divine intervention of Apollo, whom Euripides has coming in at the end to enforce a happy conclusion.
Helen (Clara Onyemere) has to therefore deliver a script in which every line trots out crucial details; "your sister Iphigenia (whom your father slew)," or "Leda (my mother) and Zeus (my father)," which lends a sort of Tales of Grecian Myth-type didacticism to everything.
Meanwhile, Orestes (Alex Robertson) rolls and raves on a big double bed, as it gradually dawns on him that he and his sister are doomed. Yet for all his groaning, Robertson fails to convey a growing sense of melodramatic fear and his suicidal gesture to Electra is unconvincing. At the same time, Nancy Meckler, directing, has chosen a temporal Lucky Dip as her guide: Electra has the solitary burden of a broad Irish brogue, and wears a tattered old vest and knickers; Helen is dressed in a Seventies Paco Rabanne cocktail dress; and Menelaos is kitted out as if fresh from the Napoleonic wars. Add to this a quasi-Antony Gormley backdrop of showroom dummies (presumably replacing the Chorus) and a bit of African singing and the clarity of the original disappears under a volume of illogical cultural references.
I must also confess to being irritated by the rather flabby profile cut by the Greek royal family. Audiences can manage all sorts of belief suspension, but this bunch just looked out of shape. And too old. Helen, supposedly the World's Greatest Beauty, could have done with several rounds in the gym before squeezing into her dress, and Electra, even when dolled up in a piece of Bacofoil, looked like a middle-aged woman whose stylist was a car boot sale. I hate to say it, but her obligatory moment of incest on the bed with Orestes made you think "dumpy", not "doomed". Only Jeffery Kissoon, playing the fearsome and vengeful grandfather Tyndareos, brought sufficient onstage charisma and grace to convince us of the play's grim savagery and noble lineage.
The final scene has a terrific transformation, as the palace doors tilt up to provide an aerial platform surrounded by fire, but then there is no Apollo descending from above to make everything work out, turn Helen into a star and give Orestes the throne. Instead, Orestes goes all Michael Jackson on us, dangling Hermione (here cast as an infant) from a height, while the drama tails away. It's a rather damp squib.
For further info and booking details, visit www.tricycle.co.uk
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