Often cited as the source of The Importance of Being Earnest, Euripides' subversive family romance, Ion, has been gaining in popularity in recent years. It was a 1994 RSC revival that confirmed Jude Law's star status. Even so, it's a pleasurable shock to find a once-rare Greek drama filling Colchester's main house on a baking June night: a testament to this theatre's adventurousness.
The other surprise is to find Mike Poulton's translation and David Hunt's production playing down Euripidean scepticism. After all, the story concerns the protracted reunion of Creusa, the Queen of Athens, and her abandoned son, Ion, a humble sweeper-up at Delphi. Given that Ion is the product of Apollo's date-rape of Creusa, that the boy is passed off as the bastard son of Creusa's husband and that the god allows Athene to sort out the confusion, you might expect a tone of mild mockery.Instead, Poulton's Hermes testily tells the mortals: "You make a mess of everything and you expect us gods to sort it out."
I suspect Euripides intended the play as a comedy. In Hunt's hands, it becomes a quasi-religious ritual, complete with interval. Within those terms, however, it is breathtakingly well done. Michael Vale's impressive set is a sand-filled disc lit by flickering flame. Ansuman Biswas's throbbing music underscores the action. And the messenger's description of an attempt on Ion's life is deftly accompanied by silhouetted images of a dove sweeping down to dash the poisoned cup from his lips.
There is plenty of fire in David Nicolle's Ion, who visibly matures as the play progresses. He is particularly good at rejecting the eager paternal embrace of Creusa's husband, crying: "What do you think I am - some temple rent-boy?" Katy Stephens endows Creusa with an affecting, grief-stricken beauty, and Katharine Barker competently leads the chorus of day-tripping Athenian women. Even if this is a pro-Apollonian production that shifts the moral blame on to mortals, it is executed with fine ritualistic bravura.
· Until June 26. Box office: 01206 573948.
