The Oresteia review – this body-shaking, blood-soaked opera is exhilaratingly wild

Singers ‘sprawl on chairs and stagger around a funeral parlour that’s like David Lynch’s Red Room via Stanley Kubrick’s Overlook Hotel and Severance’: Sydney Chamber Opera presents The Oresteia. Photograph: Brett Boardman

Ambition and desire. Sacrifice and death. Vengeance and violence. Justice and regeneration. Repeat.

Greek drama is so hot right now. It’s not only Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey: Robert Icke’s Oedipus went to Broadway this year after a successful UK season, and Simon Stone’s Simon Stone’s The Oresteia opened in London this month. Last month in Sydney David Wenham performed An Iliad at Sydney Theatre Company and now, at Carriageworks, we have Liza Lim’s operatic take on Aeschylus’s blood-soaked revenge cycle.