I thought I'd seen enough Greek tragedy for a lifetime; Rina Yerushalmi's revision of the story of the house of Atreus through the lens of the contemporary Middle East has changed my mind. That Yerushalmi has taken significant narrative liberties with a familiar story is at the heart of her message and of the aesthetic of this co-production from the ITIM Theatre Ensemble and the Cameri Theatre, both of Tel Aviv.
The ancient is invoked, but then made unfamiliar. Contemporary visual and aural references, and subversive play with gender, are layered: street-worn trainers peek out from underneath flowing beige robes worn by chorus members; the action is narrated by an actor in drag as a cliched middle-aged Jewish housewife.
Many seats were empty after the interval - but it is only by hanging on that we appreciate the true daring of Yerushalmi's strategy, which is to centre her story on the youngest members of the Atreus line, Electra and Orestes, and to force them to relive the bloody legacy into which they were born.
The first act concerns Electra's successful strategy to get revenge for her father Agamemnon's death, by having Orestes kill both their mother Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. Then the Furies arrive, and it is as if time sucks brother and sister backwards into a nightmare replaying and overlapping of past events. Their father sacrifices their sister Iphigenia, mother slays father and his mistress, and Orestes kills his mother again.
Yerushalmi's staging of these scenes is daringly contemporary and stylised, but sometimes she goes too far - Orestes singing Bohemian Rhapsody, Iphigenia in a fluorescent orange wig. What is perfectly calibrated, however, is Yerushalm's conception of the chorus. We slowly become suspicious of their complicity in what is happening: their interventions often feel less like explication than excuses and distractions.
The production asks whether history, and "universality" can justify what happens on its stage - and on the streets of Haifa and the West Bank today.
· Ends tonight. Box office: 00 353 1 677 8899.
