Elektra/Orestes

Not one but three Greek dramatists – Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus – have played their part embedding this tale of intergenerational revenge into our race memory. 

Elektra conspires with her exiled brother Orestes to murder her mother Klytemnestra and lover Aegisthus, in revenge for their murder of her royal father, Agamemnon.  (Klytemnestra was in turn revenging the murder by Agamemnon of their eldest daughter – which he made as a sacrifice to get good winds to do battle at Troy!).

Continuing its recent interest adapting Greek classics, Belvoir domesticates this bloody power struggle into a stark contemporary apartment. As Elektra, perfectly scrungy Katherine Tonkin in tracky dacks is consumed with anger, as she baits her mother, who is superbly played by the classy Linda Cropper as all stiff and sad assertiveness.  

Sleazy Aegisthus (Ben Winspear) in a dressing gown, looking anything but a usurping monarch, ocassionally wanders through to the kitchen, where he gropes Klytemnestra’s other daughter (Ursula Mills). This is one dysfunctional family, and all is bloody revenge when Orestes arrives home.  

The best trick in this adaptation by Jada Alberts and Anne-Louise Sarks – who also directs – is the midway revolving of Ralph Myers’ set, when we see the action repeated but this time viewing the kitchen. Here Orestes lurks and then attacks. 

This contemporary reading is engaging, even thrilling as a domestic drama, but it does slip into banalities, unsupported by much psychological insight or depth of character. Hunter Page-Lochard, for example, embodies Orestes’ boyish yearnings but not much of his consuming fatalistic drive for revenge.

Indeed, these three siblings don’t even look or sound related, which is no help in building empathy for their filial abuse.

Only Cropper carries some heavier authority, some suggestion of deeper purpose and complexity, even if this short play leaves that unexplored. This is a stripped back entertaining adaptation which lacks lingering impact.

Martin Portus

Photographer: Lisa Tomasetti