(Alexandra Spring’s article appeared in the Guardian, 3/20.)
This is how all Greek tragedies should be performed. Belvoir’s new show Elektra / Orestes is fast and furious, packing the Sophoclean epic into just one hour, and abandoning masks and robes and choirs for trackie daks and sunhats and surround sound. There’s a stabbing and a fight scene, blood and more than a hint of sex, all bringing the grandiose Greek legend into affecting modern day reality.
The adaptation was written by playwright Jada Alberts (Brothers Wreck) and Anne Louise Sarks, who also directs the play. They’ve kept the key events: eight years after Klytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus murdered returning king Agamemnon, eldest daughter Elektra still refuses to forgive her mother. But when heir apparent Orestes returns from exile, the time has come for revenge.
http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/mar/20/elektra-orestes-review-belvoir-theatre