This is how all Greek tragedies should be performed. Belvoir’s new show Elektra / Orestes is fast and furious, packing the Sophoclean epic into just one hour, and abandoning masks and robes and choirs for trackie daks and sunhats and surround sound. There’s a stabbing and a fight scene, blood and more than a hint of sex, all bringing the grandiose Greek legend into affecting modern day reality.
The adaptation was written by playwright Jada Alberts (Brothers Wreck) and Anne Louise Sarks, who also directs the play. They’ve kept the key events: eight years after Klytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus murdered returning king Agamemnon, eldest daughter Elektra still refuses to forgive her mother. But when heir apparent Orestes returns from exile, the time has come for revenge.
Albert and Sarks have stripped out the “thees” and “thous” for contemporary dialogue, and the play has set in the family kitchen instead of the palace. There’s also only the barest sketch of the complicated backstory rooting the piece in the here and now.
By stripping the play of the robes and poetry, the central ideas of grief, love and revenge are given space and relevancy. While the Greek classics were created as morality tales, at the centre is an all too familiar dysfunctional family, mired in grief and tragedy. Although kingdoms may not be at stake for most these days, domestic violence, murder and infanticide are still worryingly common events.
You can draw comparisons between this production and Belvoir alumnus Simon Stone’s 2010 production of Thyestes (another episode of the Greek soap opera) for Melbourne’s Hayloft Project, for which Sarks was assistant director and dramaturg, but while that production may have been rock’n’roll theatre, this production is the epic made domestic.
The cast is terrific, all delivering nuanced performances as these complicated flawed characters. Katherine Tonkin is a commanding centre as the relentlessly anguished and domineering Elektra, while Hunter Page Lochard is affecting as a malleable younger brother Orestes. As played by Ursula Mills, middle sister Khrystothemis is the mostly-innocent heart of the family, while Linda Cropper plays Klytemnestra brilliantly as the somewhat-misunderstood mother. The only disappointment is the underuse of the excellent Ben Winspear, who as Aegisthus is mostly sleazy with a dash of sympathy.
Ralph Myers’ clever use of a revolving stage divides both stage and story in half in an elegant way, and note should also go to the savvy sound, lighting and costume design. While the contemporising of the story is satisfying, the only missing element is an understanding of why their violently abusive, largely absent father would engender such devotion in at least two of his children.
Some critics may argue that the unrelenting pace leaves no room for light and shade, but the ending (no prizes for guessing) leaves the audience with a sadness at how delusional and hypocritical humans can be and a sigh of relief that most of us don’t have to live with an Elektra.
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Elektra / Orestes, Belvoir, Sydney, until 26 April
