Tag Archives: Euripides

Helen – August 2009

8/10

By Euripides, translated by Frank McGuinness

Directed by Deborah Bruce

Venue: Shakespeare’s Globe

Date: Friday 21st August 2009

This was a jolly romp, or as a friend of ours put it “a lot of nonsense, but very enjoyable”. Frank McGuiness has done another excellent version of a Greek play, using modern idiom superbly well when needed, and bringing out the comedy in this rather fantastical piece by Euripides.

The premise is that Helen was not stolen away to Troy but secretly whisked away to Egypt by a vengeful Hera, who substituted a fake Helen, conjured from vapours, to satisfy Paris. (Paris, you will remember, pleased Aphrodite enormously when he picked her as the most beautiful goddess in Olympus, but Hera and Athena weren’t so happy. Olympus may have talent, but it also has spite, jealousy and a nasty taste for revenge.)

Helen is a bit fed up, firstly from waiting for Menelaus to come and get her, then with hearing how she’s reviled by everyone for causing the Trojan War, lots of deaths, etc., and now having to fend off the unwelcome attentions of the new king Theoclymenes who’s looking after her. She was left with his father originally, but he died and his son quite fancies having a Greek queen. The Trojan war was over seven years ago, there’s been no definite word of Menelaus (but lots of rumours that he’s dead) and Theoclymenes sees no reason not to marry Helen, even against her wishes, the brute!

A Greek sailor turns up, who tells Helen her husband’s probably dead, and she’s just getting down to some serious breast beating and wailing when her ‘women’ (several of them played by men) acting as a mini-chorus, advise her to check with the king’s sister first. This sister, Theonoe, is a prophet and knows everything that goes on. If she says Menelaus is alive, then he’s alive. Encouraged by this advice, and with a warning from the chorus to get a straight answer from Theonoe (you know what these oracles can be like) Helen heads off.

Next thing you know, Menelaus is staggering through the audience before collapsing in a heap on the stage. Revived by a singing person (after Streetcar yesterday, another white dinner jacket – is this a trend?) he tells us how difficult it’s been to get home from Troy. He no sooner gets within sight of Sparta than he’s blown to yet another corner of the Med. This time, his ship’s been destroyed and he’s left ‘Helen’ hidden away in a cave, with his men guarding her, while he goes in search of food for them all. His first encounter is with a mouthy servant, straight out of Molière, who tells him to get while the getting’s good. The king doesn’t like Greeks, apart from that Helen woman he wants to marry. This makes Menelaus prick up his ears, and when Helen returns, joyful at Theonoe’s news that Menelaus is alive, they enter into a strange reunion dance, neither one quite able to believe the other’s identity at first. When one of Menelaus’s men comes from the cave to tell him that ‘Helen’ has vanished, Menelaus gets over his doubts and soon they’re plotting how to escape from Egypt.

The first step is to persuade Theonoe not to tell the king her brother that Menelaus has arrived, as he would simply have him bumped off. It’s tricky, as Theonoe is torn between helping Helen’s legitimate husband and loyalty to her brother. Finally, an appeal to consider what her dead father would have done tips the scales; she knows he would have restored Helen to Menelaus, and agrees to keep the information from her brother.

That done, they need to find a ship that will take them all back to Sparta. Menelaus may have been one of the leaders who defeated mighty Troy but he hasn’t much of a clue when it comes to devious manipulation. For that we need Helen’s quick wits. She decides to tell the king that Menelaus has drowned, and before she can remarry she must carry out a symbolic burial at sea to appease the gods or whatnot. Menelaus himself will pretend to be a Greek sailor who saw his death and has brought the news to her. Once aboard the ship, Menelaus and his men can get rid of the Egyptian sailors and sail for home. It’s a good plan, but will the king fall for it?

Of course he will. He doesn’t have a clue about Greek rituals and he’s keen to get on with his own nuptials, so Helen and Menelaus are given carte blanche to kit the ship out with whatever they need for the ceremony.  There’s a nasty moment when the king suggests he should accompany her, but he’s quickly dissuaded, and the couple make their escape safely.

Now all that remains is to hear the news of their escape brought back to the king, followed by a final intervention by Castor and Pollux, and before you know it the band are playing a jazzy little number for the cast to jive to at the end.

It was good fun, and although we had the usual problem at the Globe of not being able to hear all of it, I caught enough to keep me happy. I noticed that both Penny Downie and Paul McGann were much clearer than the others, especially the first sailor who arrived to speak to Helen; he had an accent and a roaring delivery that made it very hard to hear his lines, though he was better when he turned the volume down.

The set had a large mound on the near side of the stage with a hidey-hole part way down it at the front. There was a lot of scaffolding everywhere, which allowed characters to climb up the far pillar, and some huge letters, presumably Greek ones, with equivalent cut-outs in the back wall. The letter nearest us was lifted up towards the end. Otherwise the stage was the usual size, and personally I think that’s a better size for this performance space.

The preamble to the play had two builders wandering round the set making desultory efforts to work. One of them even sat down and had his lunch, as well as reading the paper. There was some sparring between them because a tool which one dropped was moved by the other, leading to retaliation. These two turned up as Castor and Pollux at the end, with the addition of cute wings which was good fun, though I have no idea what the connection with the initial builders bit was.

© 2009 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Orestes – September 2006

Experience: 6/10

By Helen Edmunson, from the play by Euripedes

Directed by Nancy Meckler

Company: Shared Experience

Venue: Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Date Friday 15th September 2006

This is an adaptation of the Orestes by Euripides, done by Helen Edmundson. Set in a lavish bedroom, with gold sheets on the bed and pairs of gold shoes hanging on the door, I found it was an interesting production which raised some good questions about the reasons people have for killing each other, without trying to come to any specific resolution to answer them all. I like this type of theatre.

The performances were excellent. Electra (Mairead McKinley) was the powerhouse of the piece. She was the one who had seen their father killed in his bath, but was unable to take revenge until Orestes’ return. She is an odd combination of sanity and obsession, not helped by Helen’s cruel remarks about her (relative) ugliness and lack of children. She conveys all the suffering which can lead to a lust for revenge, together with the intelligence and cunning that comes from waiting a long time to get that revenge. She it is who hits on the idea of killing Helen, to pay back Menelaus for daring to take the throne from her and her brother, the rightful heirs (or matricides, as the mob outside the palace prefer to call them). She has more loose screws than B&Q, yet she’s still saner than her brother, whose final descent into total insanity horrifies even her, although that’s partly because he’s just buggered up their one chance to escape the mob. She is also able to argue convincingly against Tyndareos, their grandfather (yes, it’s another Greek dysfunctional family, folks), who is practically baying for their blood, though in slightly more civil terms than the mob outside. His focus is the law – they have killed their mother (his daughter), so they must die. He’s not so hot on why the law didn’t crack down on Clytemnestra and her lover when they killed Pops, but that’s politicians for you. A lovely performance from Jeffrey Kissoon.

Menelaus (Tim Chipping) is wonderfully portrayed as a weak, indecisive type, who’s nevertheless prepared to take advantage of his niece and nephew’s plight to gain political clout for himself. After depleting the forces of wherever he ruled before the Trojan War, he’s now looking for a new country to rule, and here’s a place that’s just lost its rulers, and about to execute their heirs/killers, and hey, he just happens to be family, so why not offer to step into the breach? Do not allow this man to make you a cup of tea; if you’ve got anything he wants, it’ll be laced with something deadly. Despite this, Menelaus comes across as one of the nicer people to begin with – bit softer, more caring and understanding, willing to help the besieged couple. Not that he’s prepared to carry through with it, and in the end, he loses more than he’d bargained for.

Orestes seems to be under his sister’s thumb in many ways, and yet she looks to him for leadership, strength and love. It’s that odd kind of relationship where it can be difficult at times to tell who’s leading and who’s following. He’s plainly more affected by their killing spree than she is – she’s wanted the revenge all along, but he’s suffering the guilt, and it’s after killing Helen that the guilt drives him to lose it completely. Alex Robertson judged his performance in this role very nicely. There’s an intriguing moment as they are heading down the suicide route, where they kiss and look like they’re tempted to make love. I don’t think this implied any pre-existing sexual relationship between them, although as this is based on Greek drama, I could be completely wrong. I just saw it as a last despairing expression of love between them, especially as Electra had been so hurt by Helen’s complete refutation of her womanhood. Still a virgin, this could be her only chance.

Helen arrives in the palace ahead of Menelaus. She’s brought their baby, who is tended to by a slave woman. Helen, though beautiful, comes across as a real bitch. Admittedly, she’s talking to the pair who killed her sister, so you have to make some allowances, but she’s so full of herself, being part-God as she claims (and there’s a cock-and-swan story, if ever I heard one!), that she’s bound to cause trouble wherever she goes. Still, she reminds us of the massive impact of the Trojan war on this world, equivalent to the First World War in more recent times, where so many died for so little reason. And those deaths are the trigger for all that happens afterwards. There are red figures lurking at the back of the stage – dummies – and for me they mainly represented the many dead on all sides because of one beautiful woman and her fatal choice. It’s a powerful confrontation, Helen and Electra, and Claire Onyemere as Helen more than holds her own. The slave woman, played by Claire Prempeh, has little to do but nurse the baby and shrink into the background, and I would have liked to have heard more from her. She does have a short conversation with Electra later, which demonstrates that, for all her reasons to suffer, she’s much more at peace than any other character in the play.

Both brother and sister rely heavily on an alleged oracular injunction to justify their actions, and it’s here that the play’s main interest lies. Is it OK to kill people because ‘God’ tells you to, or not? This, despite ‘God’ having spent centuries passing on the message that killing is not a good idea. In many languages! Through many wise people! I am firmly in the ‘killing is not a good idea’ camp, and I regard with deep suspicion anyone claiming that ‘God’ has given them a licence to kill. However, it does happen, and we need to come to terms with this particular insanity, which never seems insane to those who find it a handy excuse. It’s noticeable that these young siblings ask for their gods’ help after they’ve decided to kill Helen, not before. I got the impression that Electra was getting a taste for murder by then.

The couple try kidnapping Menelaus’ baby as a way of negotiating an escape, but it all goes horribly wrong when Orestes tries to fly off a cliff. Oops. Not having a handy cliff on stage, the shoe-laden door had to double as a dangerous precipice (from comments at the post-show, this didn’t involve any acting on the door’s part). I found this ending a bit confusing, because there was so much going on. On the cliff, we have Electra, in front of her brother but supposedly looking forward at him. He’s behind her physically, so he can use a rope to brace himself and appear to be flying or falling (take your pick). Menelaus is down below, screaming at everyone because he’s petrified his baby is going to be killed, and Helen’s dead body has somehow rolled itself onto the stage. God knows what Tyndareos and the slave woman are doing – I couldn’t keep track of it all. Orestes has also sprouted some feathers at his shoulders, which were intriguing, but didn’t help with the clarity at this point. Also, the rear semicircle of the stage burst into flames as all this is happening, so we had a few hazards to keep our minds off the action. Normally I like Shared Experience’s multi-layering, but this was a bit too much. I basically focused on Electra and Orestes, and left the rest to their own devices.

There wasn’t much else to report on the staging; the set worked well to convey the place and situation – an opulent prison – and the main focus was simply the performances, all of which were first rate. I would happily see this again.

© 2006 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me