‘This is the story of my severed head.” As first lines go, it’s hard to beat for drama. Deborah Pugh speaks as the decapitated Medusa whose head is emblazoned on Athena’s shield. She begins by telling us how it got there and proceeds to other swashbuckling stories: of the Amazon queen Penthesilea, the seer Cassandra, the wronged mother Clytemnestra. They are all hair-raisingly told, though Penthesilea’s fight with Achilles is a showstopper, riveting in its tension and tragedy.
This is a scintillating monologue, co-created by Ad Infinitum’s Pugh and George Mann, which contains centuries of ancient Greek drama in 75 minutes. It is an alternative Iliad, of sorts, which foregrounds the heroism of its women, brave and battle-ready even as they are cast out or killed (though some fates are altered). The gods are as vicious as the men but never once do Pugh’s heroines become victims.
