Oresteia (review)

The Oresteia. By Aeschylus, in a new version by Ted Hughes. Royal National Theatre, Cottesloe Theatre, London. 15 January 2000.

Before his death in 1998, Yorkshire poet Ted Hughes finished his version of Aeschylus' powerful trilogy The Oresteia. For its premiere at the Royal National Theatre, director Katie Mitchell divided the trilogy into two parts. Part one, subtitled The Home Guard, consisted of a mostly uncut Agamemnon, while part two, The Daughters of Darkness combined cut versions of The Choephori and The Eumenides. Mitchell's interpretation of Hughes' text, which lasted nearly six hours, completely abandoned the notion that ancient Greek drama must be grandiose, mysterious and culturally alien.

Hughes' poetic text was written in bold, intimate English and confronted philosophical issues with an unabashed directness. Repeated words and phrases added to the relentless vengeance pervading the trilogy and suggested that inward, private thought and public rhetoric were inexorably linked. Hughes' chorus invited the audience to contemplate the moral, public world, asking about God and goodness. In Mitchell's production the chorus looked at the audience and waited for answers to their questions. Rather than give way to emotions the audience of this production was asked to think about ideas and was implicated in the action of the play. The cast entered in a neat line and slowly looked at the audience with both curiosity and doubt. They crossed the stage and stopped to gaze again as if to assure we knew this was our story as well as theirs. The watchman entered, ascended a ladder, lit a cigarette, addressed the audience in a conversational style, and the story began.

Like Mitchell's productions of The Phoenician Women and 3 Henry VI: The Battle for the Throne, both for the Royal Shakespeare Company, The Oresteia reminded us of contemporary civil war in the Balkans. Songs of celebration for Agamemnon's return and prayers to the gods evoked the folk culture of Eastern Europe. Cassandra, in shackles, exposed her bruised, soiled, raped body and was a [Begin Page 563] horrifying reminder of what warring ethnic groups do to each other. The suppliant chorus later in The Choephori resembled Balkan women. Agamemnon's chorus, in costumes reminiscent of World War II, gathered together as veterans of previous civil wars and were pushed about in wheelchairs by nurses. These men acted as journalists, chronicling Clytemnestra and Agamemnon's stories on tape recorders and typewriters. Calchas' prophetic words were here replayed on a scratchy cassette recording.

Although there were several fine performances, most notably, Anastasia Hille as Clytemnestra and Lilo Baur as Cassandra, the production clearly emphasized communal experience rather than that of the unique individual. Mitchell, who is known for her ensembles, divided the chorus part into individual lines and no one stood out as the chorus leader. All actors were double cast as chorus members, reminding us that tragic figures like Orestes and Clytemnestra were not separate from a larger community. The importance of collective experience was exemplified in Mitchell's handling of Orestes' final judgment. The Furies (who, unfortunately, were far from menacing with their business suits, brief cases, and stocking masks) doubled as the jurors. After the decision, they entered one by one and slowly looked at the audience as if asking us for our opinion of the judgment. The sequence was reminiscent of the production's beginning moment and confirmed the need to survive as a community.

Sophisticated technology served as a counterpoint to both the European folk atmosphere and the ever present raw brutality. For example, celebrants danced in honor of Agamemnon's homecoming, their filmed images were projected on a large screen at the back of the stage, and Clytemnestra praised her victorious husband over a microphone. Such technology served as vivid (and often loud) reminders of the modes of twentieth-century civil strife. With the use of technology, Mitchell also challenged us to compare Aeschylus and Hughes with other literary figures. Before Athene's entrance, the Furies sifted through books on a large table. On the video screen we...