oh oh oh acursed is the house of atreus!
so srt’s young co. acclaims although it got to a point where it sounded more like a proclamation of doom for the fall of the house of usher. 1.5 hrs of an srt adaptation of steven berkoff’s adaptation of aeschylus’ agamemnon and i started to wonder if director michael corbridge could have taken too much liberty and risked watering down the text while attempting to make it more accessible to a younger modern audience. but it has prompted my interest to dig up a copy of berkoff’s work since i’ve only read the english translations of the aeschylus extant original.
corbridge chose to focus his interpretation of berkoff’s retelling on the theme of the futility of war and draw modern examples to the human condition of it. nothing wrong with that and a worthy cause except by the end of the show i realise i couldn’t feel anything that might have been tragic about what was portrayed. and agamemnon is greek tragedy. never mind if it might have been a conscious decision in this version to not tackle any of the things that make it greek tragedy, none of the hubris, climax and denouement, none of the intertwining vicious cycles of violence, none of the futility of being human at the whims of the gods. imagine if hamlet was portrayed as a comedy sans tragic elements. but that’s the point, it wouldn’t ever be. to do that is to destroy the integrity of the play.
what corbridge managed to bring out nicely in parts was some of the humour, sartoric wit and bloodiness, but at the expense of making the play seem more like wry comedy than tragedy. most of the tragic was lost even if it was scripted in the lines. innocent iphigenia and cassandra were lost, mainly through less than clear articulation and diction. there was no real engagement with agamemnon or clytemnestra or aegisthus, and the intricate web of treachery binding them and their houses was lost. by the end it was just like watching over a story unfold.
this was the first time in a long time that i watched any performance put up by theatre students and graduating class anywhere and i was rather surprised by it because i thought that for a commercially-run 2-year part-time programme administered by an established theatre company itself would have produced a higher standard. the graduating students were alright but i think that was about it. what was even more distracting from their performances were the first and second year’s in the supporting cast. their acting wasn’t much to speak of, albeit i am willing to give it to them that they are still under training.
the bulk of them formed the chorus to the play and while it did rightly feature prominently and in varying responsibilities in carrying the play, the dynamics of the chorus members just wasn’t tight enough. a chorus is a group of many which act as one and there wasn’t enough fluidity, rhythm or chemistry to give that amount of presence, save for just one scene where they briefly got it all down pat with the ingenious use of their fluttering face masks. and even the largely school audience for the night agreed judging by the only spontaneous applause to erupt during the whole performance. outside of that the chorus looked more like a bunch of school girls trying out the catwalk for miss universe and their lines were delivered mechanically like you could see them counting the cues in their heads. corbridge should have worked them harder.
there were instances however where some ideas and concepts being toyed with showed much potential the rather physical scene of chefs cooking babies in bloodied sauce got the balance between human revulsion, violence, shock, killing humour (pun intended) twinged just about right and helped set the mood and atmosphere at the play’s beginning. sadly this was not carried through strongly enough throughout the rest of the play. the use of mirroring texts for the kings of troy and greece in their chess game cum fight scene was nicely thought out and relatively well executed.
sadly there was hardly any chemistry between the protagonists and so this did nothing to help bring our better the poignant tragedy in each of them. clytemnestra was sadly disappointing. towards the end she reached a point where she was wailing her head off at everything but the audience couldn’t even catch much of the words. there wasn’t a strong enough link established between aegisthus’ family tragedy mentioned in the beginning chef scene and when the man himself finally appears at the end. any sense of agamemnon the man, not the king, is also barely brought out by the brief mention of tiredness before he is killed. poor delivery also meant a more trying time for the audience to pay attention and wanting the action to just move to the next scene quicker.
beyond acting, the set held many hopes for interesting uses but none of these came to light. the action seemed satisfied to enter and exit through the standard wings, sides of the audience and two curtained doorways on stage. the rest of it was rather unused save for where cassandra skulks behind the screen to listen in on the quarreling agamemnon and clytemnestra, and where the chorus sit on the steps and carved seats.
thought-provoking with its bold, futuristic design, neon-lighted it may have been but with not much of it used, the set became too much of a distraction instead from the main action. and this is a deadly sin for set design. or for any technical design aspect for that matter. above the altar with the bull’s head (nice touch to pay homage to the original greek tragedy), the 2 slightly ajar windows with a rope strung out from one of them across to the upstairs balcony of 4 limbless torsoes seemed inviting. but nothing developed there.
costume, though not too badly designed, was a minefield for the actors and distracting for the audience on a number of occasions. clytemnestra’s gown clearly had too long a train as she was stepping on it in her stilettos or others were tripping on it. and it was so obvious that she felt quite cold on stage and wasn’t wearing a bra either. the flowing asymmetrical gowns cut high on the thigh on one side for the chorus girls unfortunately gave a number of young school boys more than an eyeful, especially when the girls had to get onto to the stage floor, leaving their chests and their knickers in constant danger.
now the slightly bitchy part. the curtain call was slightly cringe-worthy when the chorus girls individually strutted their stuff, reminding me of the ms universe paegant opening again. hopefully they’re not getting heady over theatre for the wrong reason either thanks to an unpleasant encounter with one of them at clarke quay coffee club later after the show.
“exxcuuuuuse meee, but the queue is over herrrre. we came first. exxcuuuuus me, the quuuuuuu is heeeerrrre!”
i heard her the first time already but had decided to ignore her irritating twang ’cause to me and harry we already assumed she and her posse of 3 had already put their names down on the queue list (and turns out they did). we just wanted to enquire and this lil teenage madame thought herself the overzealous righteous citizen with a mouth to shoot off. in the end we still got a table quicker than she. for the rest of the night she seemed happy to compete with the din of the crowd to display her cooler than thou attitude.
sorry but you’re no girlfriend. and worst, you can’t even act. so stop behaving like a diva just because you think you’re doing theatre. that sort of attitude spells doom for the development of the craft here.
oh and since we’re being bitchy, let’s not even get into how harry was appalled at how ugly all the cast girls were. thank god we didn’t pay more than 20 bucks for the show.
if not for 
