On Thursday we were at the Bridge Theatre in London to see a new production of 'The Oresteia', written and directed by Simon Stone "After Aeschylus & Others". 'The Oresteia' by Aeschylus is the only surviving ancient Greek trilogy of three connected plays. Recounting the murder of King Agamemnon by his wife Clytemnestra in revenge for his sacrifice of their daughter Iphigenia - followed, in turn, by their son Orestes avenging the death of his father by executing Clytemnestra and her lover. (According to Professor Edith Hall, writing in the Theatre Programme, the Oresteia was in fact a tetralogy. The fourth play, now lost to us, was a rumbustious satyr drama, with the chorus changing into hairy body suits with animal hooves.) The Australian writer and director Simon Stone comes to 'The Oresteia' having developed a reputation for re-workings of classics, from 'Medea' and 'Phaedra' to Ibsen's 'Wild Duck' and 'The Lady from the Sea'. We saw his version of Lorca's 'Yerma', starring Billy Piper, in 2017 (reviewed here in September 2017), in a modern setting in which the characters were encased in an enormous glass box that filled the stage. Stone's technique involves building the script through rehearsals, drawing inspiration from his cast's work. The first thing that strikes you about the Oresteia is the incredible set by Lizzie Clachan - an almost life-size two-storey house on a massive revolving stage, allowing the audience to peer through floor-to-ceiling windows into a giant doll's house, revealing the trauma going on in Agamemnon's family. As with the glass box from 'Yerma' (also designed by Lizzie Clachan), the glass windows of the house mean we can only hear the actors through their microphones: there is one scene with a character throwing boxes around a bedroom where we can hear what he is saying but the colliding props are eerily silent to us. Unfortunately some of the witty crosstalk in the early scenes is hard to follow because the detail of the characters speaking over each other is not distinct enough through the microphones. Stone uses the modern day setting to skip backwards and forwards through the tragic events spanning 2016 to 2026, gradually piecing together the story of murder and revenge. This creates a gripping narrative structure for the drama and makes much better use of the principal actors than having them play no further part after their murders. David Morrissey plays Christopher ('Agamemnon') and Mary Louise-Parker his wife Montie ('Clytemnestra') with Tom Glyn-Carney as their son Augie ('Orestes') and Rosie Sheehy as their daughter Alice ('Electra'). We last saw Sheehy stealing the show in 'The Brightening Air' by Conor McPherson at the Old Vic (reviewed here in May 2025). It's a spectacular and intriguing production that teeters between angst-ridden tragedy, black comedy and grand guignol, but I'm not sure it entirely works. The test of any modern reworking of Greek tragedy should be whether, by the end, we believe that these events would have driven these modern characters to commit the heinous acts they do. When we saw Mike Bartlett's new version of 'Medea' at Watford Palace Theatre in 2012 (reviewed here in November 2012), he did succeed in making us believe that Rachael Sterling's Medea would have murdered her children. But while Simon Stone's 'Oresteia' definitely showed the extreme emotional strain of each of the protagonists, I wasn't totally convinced that in its modern setting this would have led to the slaughter we witnessed. And by abandoning the chronological sequence of events of the three original plays, there's really no reason to present it in three acts with two intervals: it felt a little indulgent at three and a half hours long. Nevertheless, it's a very well-acted, inventive and visually stunning production.
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