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A CurtainUp Review
Hecuba
Thanks to Kristin Linklater, it is time to reverse the age old biblical quotation often attributed to teachers (Mt 23:2-3 "The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat. So you must obey them and do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach.") Linklater has some fine acting credits, but she is most renowned over the past 40 years as a teacher of voice and speech training, as well as Shakespeare. To see and hear Linklater's astonishing performance as Hecuba in Euripides Greek classic is a great treat. Her concentrated visceral fury as the fallen Queen of Troy never wanes but steadily builds into a towering inferno of dramatic intensity. Aided by an easy to access, yet lyrical, translation by William Arrowsmith, Linklater heads up a company that cannot help but be responsive to the onslaught of her words, the expressiveness of her face and the vividness of her body language. Largely as the result of Helens actions, the Trojan kingdom is being ransacked and decimated by the victorious Greeks. Pity the once proud Trojan queen who, with her daughter Polyxena (Heather Tom) and the rest of the Trojan women (chorus), is now enslaved. With her bare feet wrapped with narrow strips of cloth, her short cropped white hair virtually bristling with rage, and her loose royal garment free to follow the centrifugal force within, we see Linklater become an emotional eddy drawing to her everyone who comes within her range. The prologue that begins the action belongs to the Ghost of Polydorus (sensitively played by Lucas Blondheim) whose murdered body is found washed up by the sea. The next bit of grief comes with the news that the Greeks demand the life of Polyxena, as a sacrifice to revenge the slaying of Achilles. Given that Toms beauty is notable and would rival Helens, her courageous and composed response to the stiff-necked and unrelenting Odysseus (Curzon Dobell), watching her as she faces death is all the more touching. What follows is the first great demonstration of Hecubas impassioned side, as she pleads with wrenching poignancy for her daughters life. But it is later that we see Hecubas skill at artful manipulation. That's when she reminds Agamemnon (given a proper autocratic arrogance by Mike Genovese) that she once spared his life and should now look aside as she takes out her revenge on the false Polymestor (Christopher McCann), the double-crossing family friend who killed Polydorus for his gold while in his care. Oh, dear. Can things get any worse? They do. Hecuba and the women vindictively attend to the blinding of Polydorus and the death his two young sons. This, however, is mercifully accomplished off-stage and with a minimum of gory detail. There are screams to be sure, but here the victims come from behind the screen dragging long strips of red fabric representing blood. No Medea-like blood-bath here. The setting, the shore of the Thracian Chersonese, is starkly evoked by designer Erik Flatmo with three stone pillars and a couple of screens that reflect shadows. Except for the abstract use of red and white (for water), director Alex Lippards precisely naturalistic quasi-contemporary staging serves the needs of the ensuing breast-beating and brutality. Rebecca Dowds mostly black and dowdy clothes for the women and modern army dress for the men plus and Aaron Blacks moody lighting supply genuine atmospherics within the intimate space; so does the eerie original music composed and performed outside the stage area by Allison Leyton-Brown and Kaveh Nabatian and in some instances sung by the chorus. This production is also a rare opportunity to see the extraordinary anguish-driven play itself. Written somewhere in the fifty years from 480 (the end of the war with Persia) to 430 (the start of the Peloponnesian War with Sparta which was to destroy Athens as an independent state), Hecuba is yet another reminder that Euripides (and Sophocles from the same time period), as well other playwrights down through the centuries, have been motivated to use the background of constant war and its potential to incite unjust and inhuman behavior to voice their concerns. Is anybody listening?
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Retold by Tina Packer of Shakespeare & Co. Click image to buy. Our Review Mendes at the Donmar Our Review At This Theater Leonard Maltin's 2003 Movie and Video Guide Ridiculous!The Theatrical Life & Times of Charles Ludlam 6, 500 Comparative Phrases including 800 Shakespearean Metaphors by CurtainUp's editor. Click image to buy. Go here for details and larger image. |