Electra
The
Cambridge Greek Play 2001
A
Review by Dr. Ruth Hazel
(For
other reviews of Electra - The Cambridge Greek Play 2001
please see database no. 2639)
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The Cambridge Greek
Play for 2001, Sophocles’ Electra, directed by Jane
Montgomery, was performed at the Cambridge Arts Theatre 11-13
October. Jane was the director for the last Cambridge Greek Play,
Trojan Women (1998), and included in this year’s production
team were the designer and composer of that Trojan Women
production, respectively, Michael Spencer and Keith Clouston.
Marta Zlatić, who had played Hecuba in Trojan Women,
was Electra.
Jane Montgomery had,
herself, been a notable Electra in Compass Theatre’s production,
directed by Neil Sissons in 1999. That production, being a touring
one, was much pared down as regards Chorus and set; the performance
style altogether was realistic and the design scheme, non-period-specific.
The Cambridge Greek Play production took a very different approach,
being able, because of the limited run and fixed venue, to use
a fuller Chorus (six women), a carefully choreographed and stylized
mode of performance, and a complicated and evocative, although
non-realistic, set.
In the centre of the
stage was a circle of white slabs, streaked with brown, black
and red. This was lit from below, to give a translucent, onyx
effect. At the rear of the circle, as the entrance to the House
of Atreus, was a broad silver metallic door frame, with no doors
but a flight of stairs leading upwards, out of sight. The stairs
were heavy metal mesh, and the grey wall of the staircase looked
like breeze blocks, so that the overall effect was of steps to
a (rather sinister) underground car park or cellar. At the front
of the circle, and extending along the apron, thus providing side
entrances, was a pathway of terracotta/honey-coloured paving slabs.
At stage right and
stage left of the mini-orchestra of slabs were shadowy areas occupied
by the Chorus women. Suspended above these areas were three chandeliers.
In the Chorus areas were six simple chairs occupied by child-sized
white dummies - one for each Chorus woman. It later became apparent
that each dummy had a photograph pinned to its chest. These dummies
thus became visual reminders of those who had ‘Disappeared’.
The Chorus moved like figures on a musical jewellery box –
stilted, mechanical, hieratical movements, not in unison, but
repeating the same moves in any one speech. They sang most of
the lines, even when in dialogue with Electra. The effect was
slightly eerie; they looked like mechanical dolls. The reversal
of conventional placing of the Chorus in the Orchestra –
by exiling them to the periphery – meant that the central
playing circle became a claustrophobic space, watched, or guarded
by, the observing Chorus.
The stage was dominated
at the opening by a figure suspended (centre stage) by its feet
from a rope: the ghastly skeletal remains of Agamemnon (the programme
recorded that this was the work of five contributors from the
London School of Fashion). The subterranean setting and this powerful
image of the ever-present, unavenged dead suggested, for me, a
moment from some film noir or experimental theatre work about
a gangster vendetta.
There were two video
screens upstage right and left of the circle. At salient points
in the play, the video monitors showed looped-tapes of evocative
images: blood spots and red shapes like Rorschach tests; images
of a small boy (Orestes) with his father, and later, of Clytemnestra
sunbathing, smoking, and in bed with Aegisthus.
As the audience entered,
a tableau was just discernible: a figure (Electra) kneeling stage
left of the skeleton, arm extended to it, motionless. The Chorus
women were also pre-set, like mannequins in a shop window. When
the lights came up, we could see that the Chorus women were dressed
alike: rose-red taffeta dresses with puffed sleeves and flounced
skirts, white gloves, black, geisha-style wigs with white bows
in them; a red-rose corsage and light white shoulder capes. When
Electra rose, one could make out that she was wearing the remnants
of a similar dress but brown and torn, and her hair was cropped
short. She had a black eye and a sack-cloth cloak.
The music (composer:
Keith Clouston) was by turns wistful, yearning and strident, bringing
together Oriental sounds and discords with ghostly echoes of the
European waltz (like the tune in a giant musical box in which
the Chorus turned in mechanical and often synchronised movements).
Finger cymbals introduced one Chorus Ode; at one point, there
was wordless vocal music from the Chorus; and at others, gramophone
music from ‘within’ introduced moments of nostalgia
or decadent schmaltz.
The movements, as
well as the costumes of the characters and the Chorus were deliberately
stylised and emblematic: Chrysothemis (Bridget Collins) wore little
girl ankle socks, a short skirt, macintosh and headscarf, and
entered with a cup and food bag - a signal of her determination
to survive. Clytemnestra (Olga Tribulato) wore a stereotypical
‘slut’ costume: black wig, fake fur coat, dark glasses
and leather pants. She was also pregnant, and smoking: what further
indication of ‘a bad mother’ could an audience need?
Aegisthus (Adam Cohen) was smartly – even flashily –
dressed in a pale suit with matching hat. He entered carrying
a bouquet, but any suggestion of gigolo softness was negated by
his grinding out a lighted cigarette on Electra’s shoulder.
It became clear that Electra’s wounds were not all self-inflicted
signs of mourning but indications of abuse by her stepfather.
There were in this
production a number of suggestions of past time coming back to
haunt the present: the video clips; the skeleton of Agamemnon;
and Electra’s ‘souvenir box’ containing photos,
medals, and a teddy bear. Moreover, the fact that Electra wore
a degraded version of the Chorus women’s costume indicated
that she, too, had once been part of a secure, protected section
of society. Her cropped hair and the signs of self-neglect and
of abuse showed that her refusal to conform and accept the current
status quo had exiled her to a no-man’s land between life
and death. Marta Zlatić’s Electra, with her angular,
distorted movements and harsh, anguished vocal delivery, seemed
at scarcely human, as if hovering between the underworld
of the dead and the morally degraded world of those now living
in the House of Atreus.
Pylades was eliminated
from this production so that more emphasis was put on Orestes’
vulnerability and indecision. (Tom Hiddleston as Orestes used
his hip flask, both to offer libations and to give himself Dutch
courage.) Video clips showing Orestes and Electra as children
cut in at particular points – for example, as Orestes held
the urn containing ‘his’ ashes high over Electra’s
head. This moment is so dramatic anyway that, it seemed to me,
the video clip was not only not necessary but actually distracting:
far better to let the audience concentrate on Electra’s reactions
to what seems to her desecration of her brother’s ashes,
and then her delirious squeal of joy when she realises the truth.
At the close of the
play, Orestes uncovered Agamemnon’s skeleton’s face
and Electra offered it flowers, then re-bagged it as Orestes led
Aegisthus off to execution. Of all the images in the production
which evoked the presence of the mute but demanding unrevenged
dead, this suspended skeleton had been the most horrific: a constant
reminder of the degradation of spirit and body which Electra had
suffered. The end of Sophocles’ Electra can suggest
healing through revenge fittingly exacted or destruction
of identity – a vacuum for Electra because what she has been
continuing to exist for has been carried out. It can also adumbrate
the material of Euripides’ Orestes, in which both
siblings descend into madness. My impression was that this production,
through a successful catharsis, did slightly weight the overall
final message in favour of a slow climb out of the underworld
– but into what?
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Classical Receptions in Drama and Poetry in English