Iphegenia at Aulis Lyttleton, London SE1
Blues for Mr Charlie Tricycle, London NW6
Jimmy Barbican, London EC2
The war in Iraq has made Greek tragedy essential. Certain resonant themes are obvious: lands laid waste by war; cosmic chaos; cycles of bloody reprisal. But it's really the prevailing sense of powerlessness that's the conclusive link between then and now. Shakespeare's plays always offer a kind of hope - the most minor character has a vivacious individuality which suggests a future. The Greeks offer none. A British audience looking for reflection of itself will find it in the chorus who observe destruction and are helpless to prevent it; who warn and go unheeded.
Productions have sprung up everywhere. Luc Bondy's blood-freezing production of Sophocles, rendered by Martin Crimp as Cruel and Tender, has returned to the Young Vic; two different stagings of Hecuba, at the Donmar and at Stratford, open within the next nine months. And now, for the second time in just over a year, there is a new version of Iphigenia at Aulis.
Few plays are more caustic about the idea of heroic leaders than this great study of the bad sacrifices made by a warrior in pursuit of a cause he believes to be just. Few have so triumphantly updated themselves.
The first move in the drama may not translate easily into the 20th century. Agamemnon, preparing to wreak war on Troy, is persuaded that the only way of getting a fair wind for the Greek fleet is to offer his daughter as a sacrifice to the gods. But the play's turning-point, and most outrageous stroke, which shows Iphigenia embracing the role of martyr with frightening enthusiasm, can look, in an age of suicide bombers, like a piece of reportage. And the ending in which the victim's mother, Clytemnestra, sets out to revenge her daughter, the stuff of newsreel.
Edna O'Brien's version of Iphigenia was given a heart-felt production by Anna Mackmin at Sheffield last year. Katie Mitchell's production, set in a war-ravaged Forties, is more bleak and more chic. Always arresting, although not always original, it suggests that the stage is engulfed in an all-encompassing nervous breakdown.
Hildegard Bechtler's set, a requisitioned building made to look like a village hall, is khaki and putty-coloured, drenched in a smog light. There are holes in the wall; the strip-lighting dangles precariously; the floor is cluttered with luggage. And no one is at rest.
Everything jitters and judders. Characters rush across the stage as if in search of an imaginary train. Great clangs and creaks from on-high jolt the chorus into nervous flurries. There may be no gods to mess things up for man, but in a mechanical universe, some big part has broken down. The all-female chorus, clad in black Forties day-dresses, grip, and sometimes drop, little clutch-bags, from which they produce powder-compacts or ciggies at moments of stress. Every now and then they break out into a trance-like Pina Bausch-influenced dance, holding themselves stiffly like wooden dolls, they weave across the stage, bumping into rows of wooden chairs.
These are unforgettable images of despondency and disarray. But in order to conjure them, Mitchell didn't need Euripides. Actually, she hardly seems to need words at all. This is a vocally underpowered - and therefore, for all its talent, undermined - production. Gifted actors: Ben Daniels, Kate Duchene, glimmer, but don't shine; they are obfuscated by the relentless visual drill.
The late Don Taylor's strong and faithful translation is supplemented by lines improvised by the actors. Speeches arise from a realistic background of mutters. The first word Agamemnon manages is 'shit'. A great play is alluded to, it is not expressed.
James Baldwin wrote Blues for Mr Charlie in 1964. He based his play on the case of Emmett Till, a black teenager killed by a white man in Mississippi in 1955. Tried by an all-white jury, the man was acquitted - and later admitted his guilt.
Baldwin's full-throttle blast against racism is transmitted in Paulette Randall's forceful production with gospel fervour. The light cast over the wooden church and houses has the glow of dying embers, a sauna effect is risked. The cast bandy dialogue as if they were taking breath from each other. The scenes are intercut with jazz instrumentals.
In the over-long first half of the play, there's a smell of the pulpit. But in the second act, dogma fades and what seemed formless now looks subtle. The jazz that loops the play together turns out to be its structure and its founding principle. One by one the characters come forward to offer their account of the dead man and his murder. No one tells the exact truth. the victim's father lies about his son's owning a gun; the killer's wife makes an altercation over small change sound like rape; a white liberal equivocates about his friendships. These solos become variations on a theme and a true liberation anthem.
It is hard to talk of Marie Brassard without hyphens. She is a French-Canadian actor-director, who is a long-time associate of Robert Lepage. She is now appearing in her own one-man show. It is accomplished. And it is totally self-absorbed.
As Jimmy, 'a homosexual hairdresser', Brassard spends most of her 70 minutes on stage with a long switch of dark hair, men's clothes and a voice miked up to sound like a dalek's; for a moment or two, she becomes an express train; and for a little longer, a child, a mother, an actor. It's all dreams, you see. Not her own, but someone else's - first an American general's and later an actress's - who dream Jimmy into existence. When they wake up or die, the poor sod ceases to exist.
She wonders - it's that kind of show - whether the audience are dreaming or being dreamed. The chances are they are hoping to wake up from a slickly perturbing nightmare.
