She enters on a red carpet, all dressed in red. The smell of incense drifts across the theatre. She cradles a doll in her arms as if it is a baby. You sense that this is a well-worn ritual. She is Clytemnestra, wife of Agamemnon, who has been away for 10 years fighting the Trojan war.
The watchman on the look-out for the return of the victorious Greek fleet knows that Clytemnestra is a force to be reckoned with. She has, he declares, the body of a woman and the brain of a man.
He might have added that she has the heart of a mother - one who cannot forget that 10 years before, when the Greek fleet was immobilised by lack of wind, Agamemnon sacrificed their daughter Iphigeneia. Clytemnestra has had a decade to brood, 10 long years to plot her revenge.
There is nothing in this adaptation of Aeschylus's play to quite match the power of these opening scenes. This is Actors of Dionysus and translator/ director David Stuttard at their best. The translation is mellifluous and colloquial, with acute psychological insight into Clytemnestra.
You feel you know and understand this woman. It is an understanding that seeps through to the play's dying moments as it becomes clear that she and her lover Aegisthus have acted from very different motives.
Unfortunately, it is pretty well all downhill after the first 10 minutes, although there are some neat touches, such as in the way the murder of Agamemnon is a mirror-image of the sacrifice of his daughter.
Stuttard's decent production is hampered by a cumbersome design. It lends height, when what the evening really needs is greater depth of characterisation, although Tamsin Shasha has a pretty good stab at Clytemnestra and Paul Oliver goes some way to making it clear that Agamemnon is a nasty, greasy piece of work. But overall, there is too much ranting and wailing, not enough intense, quiet pain.
· Until April 19. Box office: 020-7936 3456.
