In the week that Christopher Nolan’s starry Odyssey comes into cinemas, you couldn’t imagine a more different take on post-Trojan-War-fallout than this from one of theatre’s own great auteurs.
Simon Stone reaches some of the same conclusions as Robert Icke’s era-defining (and similarly bum-numbingly long) version at the Almeida in 2015 – humans bad, wars bad, revenge bad – but this stands on its own terms as Stone puts all the toys in his toybox to their best use. Yes, like many of his previous productions, the play happens in a glass cube, an opulent modernist mansion in miniature from Lizzie Clachan – concrete walls, chrome-edged recliners – lit from within by Nick Schlieper, turning each scene into a modern Gothic tableau.
