HECUBA. To 7 May.

London

HECUBA
by Euripides translated by Tony Harrison

Albery Theatre To 7 May 2005
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Wed & Sat 2.30pm
Audio-described 26 April, 30 April 2.30pm
Captioned 13 April 7.30pm
Runs 1hr 50min No interval

TICKETS: 0870 060 6644 (£2.50 booking fee)
www.rsc.org.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 11 April

Ancient Greek war-cries resonate today.It is beautiful throughout, finely spoken and sung. As in Greek times the Chorus sings, mainly in unison, a melodic line simple enough to leave the words clear; they're good enough to form an RSC choir. There are only a few gratuitous moments Odysseus is pointedly American, the other Greeks English-sounding. Ironically, all this order and elegance portrays violence and bloody culture-smashes. Euripides knew humans raise civilisations then raze them to the ground.

Laurence Boswell marshals the large-scale forces expertly in well-paced telling of the story (we're so used to small-scale Greek tragedies a 12-strong Chorus and huge circular-section walls come as a surprise). It's a story with no victors. Human nature is corrupt or corroded. Malcolm Tierney's wise-looking Agamemnon, later called on to judge a moral conflict, pauses before uttering the word destiny, realising it's a euphemism for what the Greeks have chosen to inflict on the defeated Trojans.

Darrell D' Silva, in the first of two fine, contrasting portrayals, shows Odysseus courteous in detail as he comes to take Trojan queen Hecuba's daughter Polyxena off to be slaughtered. Lydia Leonard is magnificent as the girl-victim. Initial courage gives way, with psychological truth, to tears in gleaming counterpoint to Chorus lamentations as she stands helpless behind them. She's fine too in Polyxena's growing resolution, finding strength to die rather than live a slave in Greece.

Nearest to any moral authority is Alan Dobie's Talthybius, a dry-mannered bureaucrat yet visibly concerned at the suffering around. This striking performance of deeply-felt restraint contrasts the venially hypocritical local lord Polymestor, who kills for money and covers it with bonhomie.

Yet the keenest moments, amid words spoken and sung, and the resonant sounds of Mick Sands' score, come in Hecuba's looks of loss. From the first, Vanessa Redgrave's despairing agony is the face of the dispossessed through history. Grief passes through emotion-drained blankness before assuming the face of revenge when Hecuba turns terrorist. As the dead-child count rises she views her blinded victim's grief with the fixed smile and staring eyes of the obsessed and demented. A terrific performance in a fine production.

Polydorus/Guard: Matthew Douglas
Hecuba: Vanessa Redgrave
Chorus: Charlotte Allam, Jane Arden, Rosalie Craig, Maisie Dimbleby, Barbara Gellhorn, Aileen Gonsalves, Michele Moran, Sasha Oakley, Katherine O' Shea, Judith Paris, Sarah Quist, Natalie Turner-Jones
Polyxena: Lydia Leonard
Odysseus/Polymestor: Darrell D' Silva
Talthybius: Alan Dobie
Hecuba's Servant: Judith Paris
Agamemnon: Malcolm Tierney
Guard: Christopher Terry
Polymestor's Children: Harry Jackson, Farah Mohamed, Darcy Solomon, Andre Symeou

Director: Laurence Boswell
Designer/Costume: Es Devlin
Lighting: Adam Silverman
Sound: Fergus O' Hare
Music: Mick Sands
Music director: Bruce O' Neil
Movement: Gary Sefton
Choreography: Heather Habens
Company voice work: Charmian Hoare
Associate Costume Designer: Emma Williams

2005-04-12 08:00:59