Marina Carr, in plays such as Portia Coughlan and By the Bog of Cats, has shown her fascination with outsiders. Now she has taken one of the great outcasts of all time, the widowed Trojan queen, and made her the centre of a drama clearly intended as a corrective to Euripides, who portrays Hecuba as an enraged avenger.
The result is eloquent and intelligent, but creates as many problems as it solves. Carr offers a radically different take on a familiar story. Her Hecuba commits no violence: instead, she sees her daughter, Polyxena, sacrificed by the Greeks to gain a favourable wind and her son, Polydorus, killed for pragmatic reasons. Behind the play lies the larger point that Hecuba is the victimised embodiment of a rich Trojan culture while the Greeks are, by and large, thuggish barbarians.
While this is an interesting point, it opens up all kinds of contradictions. One minute, Agamemnon, the Greek leader, is at the mercy of his coalition forces whose demand for the murder of Polyxena recalls the death of Iphigenia: the next, he himself heartlessly sanctions child-murder. Carr also makes strange use of reported speech in which encounters are described rather than enacted.
The piece is directed with impressive severity by Erica Whyman, on a stage bisected by Soutra Gilmour’s angled mirror. Derbhle Crotty is an excellent Hecuba whose maternal grief is tempered by a contempt for the Greeks, “rolling in here stinking of goat shit and mackerel,” that doesn’t stop her sleeping with their leader. Ray Fearon also unravels many of the complexities of Agamemnon by making him a lecherous bruiser with a hint of conscience, and there is an extraordinarily confident performance by Luca Saraceni-Gunner, one of three boy-actors sharing the role of Polydorus.
But, while it is perfectly legitimate to rewrite dramatic legend, I feel Carr is pushing at an open door: even in Euripides, I’ve alway felt that the vengeful Hecuba was a sympathetic figure with justice on her side.
- At the Swan, Stratford-upon-Avon, until 17 October. Box Office: 0844-800 1110.
