You wait 2,500 years for a radical re-evaluation of the Oresteia, and three come along at once. Blanche McIntyre’s production of Aeschylus’s trilogy follows new stagings seen at London’s Almeida and Shakespeare’s Globe earlier this year; though where those ventures topped out at well over three hours, McIntyre’s version – based on a heavily cropped version of the Ted Hughes translation, first seen at the National Theatre in 1999 – is virtually an edited highlights package, and spins through the cycle of slaughter and reprisal in less than 120 minutes. McIntyre’s austere, ritualistic approach restores some elements of classical propriety – all acts of violence are committed off stage – though it is notable that the actors must exit through one of those sheer chain-link curtains that butchers use to keep flies out in warm weather. Laura Hopkins’s black, shingle-covered set seems a kind of hellish beach resort: Troy is represented by a sandcastle, vulnerable to the foot of the first casually aggressive deity to come running along the beach; and when Lyndsey Marshal’s chillingly quiet-spoken Clytemnestra invites Gary Shelford’s bullish Agamemnon to step upon the royal carpet, a chorus of cleaning ladies emerge to scrape away the top layer, revealing a grisly trail of scarlet.
The primacy of the chorus, drawn from a large ensemble of local people, is central to McIntyre’s interpretation. While it may seem natural to link these plays to a city with a strong tradition of democratic protest, it is notable, in Hughes’s rendering, how inert the populace proves to be: “Let us make a sober enquiry into the king’s health” they eventually resolve, in response to bloodcurdling death cries heard off stage. And the peremptory banishment of the Furies by a newer breed of eloquent, more sophisticated gods, suggests that the Oresteia represents not only the civilised world’s first court to investigate homicide, but also its first great miscarriage of justice.
• At Home, Manchester, until 14 November. Box office: 0161-200 1500.
