We round up the reviews for Simon Stone’s production, running at the Bridge Theatre until the 19th September.
Broadway World: “But Stone’s script works best when it lets the myth’s machinery drop away and the performances blossom.”
The Guardian: “There are great, confident cross-references for Greek theatre buffs, but it does feel like story upon story and builds to a strange kind of thoughtlessness, charging relentlessly on. The family’s cycle of violence is expanded into Britain’s own: an Anglo-Saxon turns up to represent historic “invasion after invasion”. Contemporary wars are mentioned – Afghanistan, Ukraine, Syria, Chechnya – although there is a puzzling omission of current conflict in the Middle East.”
Everything Theatre: “Spreading from household into history, the wider scope of this miasma eradicates any possibility of redemption. No dea ex machina turns up in Stone’s version to transform the demons of vengeance into agents of justice; his Orestes ends up in a mental institution, fundamentally unforgiven and completely alone. The audience is sent home to doom-scroll.”
The Arts Desk: “The performers are to be commended for attacking their roles with brio, but they perhaps play their banter too much for laughs at times. My seat neighbour on opening night found everything uproarious, so much so that he made my seat shake, but nothing happening onstage had that same impact on me. It wasn’t a dull evening, and oddly the four hours’ playing time didn’t drag, but at every turn I kept thinking, why are we here?”
London Theatre.co.uk: “His direction is masterful, as Lizzie Clachan’s chilling glass home sickeningly rotates between each revelatory scene — one moment revealing a bloodied body in a bath, the next, a tense dinner party. Dark humour collides with grim horror until the final act, which becomes an unrelenting barrage of grief as the broken Augie (by the war in Afghanistan, but chiefly by his family) falls in and out of a fugue state, snatches of buried memories pushing through. There is no need for a trial — as in the third part of the original trilogy. The startling burden of wasted life is laid bare.”
London Pub Theatres Magazine: “The quality of acting from the cast of nine plus a handful of understudies in minor roles, is remarkable. All are so powerful that the characters they portray linger long after you leave the theatre. Stand-outs include Mary-Louise Parker as Montie, the Clytemnestra figure who murders her husband (David Morrisey as Christopher – good) because she can’t forgive him for the death of their daughter. Parker finds intensity and complexity in a woman torn apart by grief, anger and passion. And it’s rivetingly painful to watch.”
All That Dazzles: “The Oresteia may impress through its creative elements, but this is more than matched through the sensational cast gathered to bring the story to life. Rosie Sheehy has already starred in one of my favourite plays of the year, and she repeats the feat here in yet another exceptional performance, this time as Alice. Through her ability to take on different accents and always deliver a believable performance, she is a dominant force in the first Act with her absence felt in the second. Sheehy is the kind of star that lights up any stage she is lucky to step on, and any time she is on that stage, even if it is in one of the relatively hidden rooms not in focus, the quality always rises.”
Time Out: “What he offers is a compulsive revenge thriller, expertly paced and structured. The fact that the story is well known is largely irrelevant: think of it as a really entertaining podcast about a murder whose details are already out there, but is told in a gripping enough fashion to largely negate this. The non-linear structure works a treat and Lizzie Clachan’s revolving house set is great for the pacing, with scenes set up in the side of the house we can’t see before it spins around.”
British Theatre Guide: “A Jacobean revenge drama, a Grand Guignol, a slasher movie, a penny dreadful, a TV soap, a tangled web, a thriller that leads us a murder mystery merry dance, this crude Oresteia has none of the dramatic poetry of the original. Jokes about misshapen vegetables, arguments petty, the dark web, it’s too shallow to be a tragedy… But the acting is vehement.”
Theatre & Tonic: “This is a tale as old as time stunningly updated for the modern era. If you enjoy Ancient Greek tragedy, stunning sets, charismatic casts and a banquet of theatricality for your senses then this is the play for you.”
The Reviews Hub: “ Simon Stone has taken the oldest surviving trilogy in Western drama and turned it into the most electrifying night currently on a London stage. Ferocious, frenetic and profoundly unsettling, anchored by an ensemble without a single weak link and staged inside a revolving house, you cannot bring yourself to look away from. Yes, it is long. No, you will not care. Ignore the running-time hand-wringing and go.”
WhatsOnStage: “Stone’s stripped-back, brutal version strands us with the overwhelming sense of chaos that violence, compromise, and constant war bring. This is Greek tragedy for an age of insanity.”
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