AGAMEMNON

Review by Dr Lorna Hardwick, Project Director, Department of Classics, Open University (performance dated 14th February 2004)

Foursight's productions of Greek plays are becoming distinctive for a thoughtful approach that takes the audience into the play without gimmicks and without coercion of their response. This was a production in which the details of set and sound design, staging, movement and words worked together to create a world that was grounded in that of the spectators and yet also took them outside their own experience and across time and place.

As might be expected from a company dedicated to exploring the perspectives of the marginalised and oppressed, Aeschylus' play was refocused to bring out Clytaemnestra's situation as the betrayed wife and bereaved mother set on revenge on her husband. This was communicated partly by cutting out the Aegisthus strand but primarily by including Ighigeneia as a player. To do this is now bound to involve metatheatrical allusions, notably to Mnouchkine's approach in which Iphigeneia in Aulis was staged as a prelude to Les Atrides (DB number ) and to Katie Mitchell's The Home Guard (DB number ), in which the ghost of Iphigeneia silently viewed the proceedings from a balcony until she followed her father into the house and then huddled with his corpse in the bath. Foursight presented Iphigeneia as a puppet with long blond hair and wearing a saffron robe. This signalled the way in which she was treated as a sacrificial object by the Greeks at Aulis and yet reminded the audience that her voice and movement was also being manipulated in order to emphasise a certain interpretation of the play. Here, she was also a mover and commentator on the action, with her Nurse holding her and vocalising the opening Watchman's speech. The physical re-enactment of her sacrifice shocked the audience and the effect was compounded when the purple shroud in which her body was wrapped was unwound to make the floor covering over which Agamemnon walked into the house. The audience waited with bated breath for him to tread on her body. He did not and the audience's deferred expectations were jolted into awareness that he was actually treading on photographs of suffering children (another allusion perhaps to the Mitchell production in which the blood-stained dresses of little girls formed the 'carpet' under his feet).

Cassandra, too, was presented through a puppet, larger than Iphigeneia but smaller than lifesize, a black child-woman in brightly coloured costume (click for images). She shook as she sang of what would happen and yet appeared to swim and leap over the purple 'sea' of the carpet and into the house and her death. The figure of the puppet had a mask like quality, analogous to the conventions of ancient theatre. This, combined with the voice of the actress who emerged from under the puppeteer's veil as the speaking Cassandra, signalled the combination of object/victim and prophesying subject represented in Aeschylus' play.
The traverse staging ensured that the opposition of the 'war' and 'home' design zones at either end of the acting space framed the movement as well as the ideas. The open space between provided a place of encounter and conflict between war and home. It allowed the visual and physical impact of the model eagles which were made by the Chorus to swoop down on the bloodied hare as the Chorus recounted the simile in which Aeschylus likened the brothers Agamemnon and Menelaus to birds of prey. The traverse space also allowed the movement of the Chorus to take place in 'the space between' the polarised extremities. This was especially effective given the diversity of gender, ethnicity and social status represented in the Chorus. It allowed space for the candle-lit rituals and laments and for the integration of movement and song. It was a pity that the shape of the Newhampton Arts Studio meant that the traverse was long and narrow and could not allow the audience to visualise movement on the diagonal.

The different languages used are an index of the tendency towards multi-lingualism in productions of Greek drama. Here, they reflected the way in which the Chorus represented not the Elders of Argos but all those left behind by the war or caught up in its aftermath. Rob Swinton's Chorus figure combined the bemedalled Establishment Elder's standard English with the religious imperative of Calchas as the sacrifice of Iphigeneia was ordered. The diversity of languages used not only mapped the cultural diversity of the Chorus members but also contextualised rituals which differed from the politicised religion of Calchas. The effect was to put the audience in the place of those caught up in something which was both familiar and strange, a war and its aftermath in which they sometimes directly understood the words and sometimes watched as cultural strangers, sometimes grasping meaning communicated through movement and gesture rather than words. Sanjay Shelat and Taylan Halici, who also played the Herald, were outstanding in their integration of voice, song and movement.

Video was used on the screen at the 'war' end of the acting space to project close-ups of Clytaemnestra's emotions and to introduce images of suffering and revenge, including the coming together of Agamemnon and Clytaemnestra in the bath as he was murdered. The images suggested an erotic dimension to their relationship and related quizzically to Naomi Cooke's deeply ironised exploration of the layers of Clytaemnestra's emotions.

Foursight's ensemble work is sensitive and nuanced. The direction gives the actors and the audience time for reflection and transformation. The company's 'take' on the play and the concentration on Clytaemnestra's grievance will be challenged by some but as a production this was intelligent, finely balanced and thought-provoking.