The story of Clytemnestra is not quite as we know it from the blood-drenched texts of ancient Greek tragedy here. In those, she is a powerful figure, plotting a murderous revenge on her husband, Agamemnon, for sacrificing their daughter.
In Marina Carr’s audacious version, the power lies squarely with Agamemnon, who consents to the ritual killing of their 10-year-old, Iphigenia, for his advancement in the war against Troy. Yet Clytemnestra is certainly not voiceless in this co-production with the Abbey theatre in Dublin.
Carr tells the story of Clytemnestra (Eileen Walsh) and Agamemnon (David Walmsley) through a series of internal monologues with revisions that make us see the shocks of this story afresh. Innovatively directed by Annabelle Comyn, the production brings a deadly coolness to the searing revelations – unlike the frenzy we saw in Ivo van Hove’s recent retelling of the same story in Age of Rage. The characters here feel larger than life as opposed to in van Hove’s version, where the humans seemed so small and insignificant amid the large-scale set.
It is a counterintuitive venture with riveting results for the most part. A few moments feel static but these are brief and there is a terrible, startling drama inside the stillness. Carr’s story is so intimate in its telling, with so many off-stage scenes painted in words, that it verges on novelistic and makes it necessary for us to imagine much of what it is described. The lighting and sound take on a stupendous force, with an interplay of black and white as doors open suddenly and shafts of light reveal new figures on stage (lighting design by Amy Mae; video design by Will Duke). The sound of lapping waves or cawing birds is crisp and beautiful (composition and sound design by Philip Stewart). With Tom Piper’s spare set design, the combined effect is astonishingly atmospheric.
The script itself has an epic quality – Homeric in its vivid detail and oral splendour – but it is at heart a pointed study of a marriage, profoundly unequal in its power. The bed on stage drives home the point that this story is about marriage, love, sex and childbirth.
Walsh’s Clytemnestra is cool-headed, intelligent, and unable to forgive her husband for killing their daughter and then dancing at her altar. Her performance is self-contained and steely but profound in its maternal pain. The pitch-perfect cast includes an exceptional performance from Kate Stanley Brennan as Clytemnestra’s serving-woman, Cilissa.
Agamemnon’s anguish is presented, too, and for a while we empathise as he tells us of his lack of options in the face of the oracle. Walmsley has a physical, prowling presence. His Agamemnon is both ancient and modern – a buffed-up soldier often stripped to the waist and pumped up on ego. Yet it is made clear that Clytemnestra controls his passions, and that his is a toxic love story of the highest order.
Interspersed through this play are reports of other girls sacrificed at altars by men who want to win wars. “What is this terrible pact among men?” asks one character. While this human sacrifice comes wrapped in an ancient patriarchal order, it resonates with current legal wrangles around women’s bodies, in Ireland, America and beyond. There is one good man and loyal father in Clytemnestra’s father, Tyndareus (Jim Findley), an incredibly touching counterpoint to the play’s abounding male toxicity.
Where Clytemnestra is killed by her children for her crime against their father in the original text, this play stops short of showing the story’s full circularity. Agamemnon is a monster by the end and Clytemnestra’s “vengeance” is a momentary loss of control – a mother’s crime of passion. It is bloody but feels discomfortingly just.
At the Kiln theatre, London, until 25 June.
