Left – Katherine Tonkin and Hunter Page-Lochard. Cover – Hunter Page-Lochard and Linda Cropper. Photos – Lisa TomasettiSydney audiences have been fortunate to see some brilliant reinterpretations of Greek tragedies in recent years – Kit Brookman’s Small and Tired and Anne-Louise Sarks and Kate Mulvany’s Medea are two outstanding, unforgettable examples. What was thrilling about these contemporary renderings was their ability to take the grand scale of the tragedy of the Electra and Medea stories respectively and invest them with a complexity of characterisation, psychological nuance and dramatic depth that resonated with modern audiences.
In Small and Tired Brookman constructed a rich contemporary life for the characters of Electra and Orestes that was devastating in the way it portrayed how a single act of violence can reverberate through a family for years.
Sarks’ and Mulvany’s version of Medea used the most heinous of acts – matricide – and took audiences behind the scenes to show us the loving relationship between Medea and her boys to reflect upon what could drive a good mother to commit such an unforgivable act.
In this reworking of the Electra myth, writers Jada Alberts and Anne-Louise Sarks remain true to the heightened style of Greek tragedy, using archetypal characters to keep the narrative tightly focussed on the major theme of the tragedy of intergenerational family violence.
This short play is divided into two parts. The first half, set in the family dining room, is more expositional than dramatic. Elektra (Katherine Tonkin) is unkempt, unwashed and madder than hell and we gather she has maintained this rage for the last eight years. She rants at her sister and then her mother, sneers at her flip and decidedly unkingly stepfather and wishes for the return of her exiled brother, Orestes (Hunter Page-Lochard).
Everybody makes Elektra angry. Eight years previously, her mother, Klytemnestra (Linda Cropper) killed her husband Agamemnon and married Aegisthus (Ben Winspear). She scolds her sister, Khrysothemis (Ursula Mills) for being so accepting of the situation and both despises her mother’s new husband and is terrified that he will kill Orestes, the heir to her father’s throne.
Elektra/Orestes derives its dramatic strength from an interesting structural twist: telling two sides of the same story from different points of view, reminiscent of the technique used by Michael Frayn in his famous comedy Noises Off.
The second half of the play replays the scene we have just experienced, but this time the stage revolves and we get to see what was simultaneously happening in the kitchen: the return of Orestes and his bloody dispatching of Aegisthus and then his mother.
Regal and anguished, Linda Cropper shines as Klytemnestra and while the other performers are strong too, the production lacks unity of a performance style. While it is clear some of the characters are from a royal family, it was difficult to believe that all of the characters were from the same milieu. This perhaps arises from the tension between placing a drama about a ruling Ancient Greek family into a contemporary Australian suburban setting (although it is a perfectly sound theatrical choice). Cropper, Mills and Page-Lochard strike a similar tone and make it absolutely believable that they share a common familial background, but as good as her performance is in portraying her anguish, Tonkin’s characterisation of Elektra makes it seem like she is from an entirely different family and an entirely different class. Elektra’s depth of despair doesn’t really explain much of Tonkin’s physical characterisation.
As admirable as Elektra/Orestes is in conveying the essence of this classic Greek drama to a modern audience, its reductive rendering of plot and character, together with an often declamatory text, leaves the production without the emotional substance that is necessary to drive the impending tragedy.
Belvoir presents
Elektra / Orestes
by Jada Alberts & Anne-Louise Sarks
Director Anne-Louise Sarks
Venue: Upstairs Theatre | 25 Belvoir St Surrey Hills NSW
Dates: 14 March - 26 April 2015
Tickets: $72 – $39
Bookings: belvoir.com.au
