Oresteia

Greek tragedies are hard to tackle, especially in modern days. Sydney Theatre Company’s production of Oresteia is another bold attempt in its 2010 season. The results? On the night that I went, 1/5 of the audience left during the intermission.

The problem to me doesn’t seem to be in the text and in fact I think the text is well adapted by Tom Wright. But the whole production and experience was so disconnected that you sometimes do wonder what on earth is happening on stage? The play reminded me heavily of a segment in “War of the Roses” – lots of powder spraying and fake blood spilling – for no reasons apart from the apparent killing of certain characters. That use of these visual aids didn’t disturb me, but annoyed me when you got such an overdose for no apparent reasons.

I digressed. Back to the play. It is the story after Troy was destroyed at a time when Argos was trapped in time and space wondering what happened. The women of Agamemnon waited for the return of their king for different reasons. And the story unfolds to tell a tale of family curses and revenge – in Greek tragedy style. The play was modernised with characters entering and leaving in one of the three elevators, which is quite smart. But the smartness ended here.

The opening monologue started off well and then descended into a series of disjointed and unconnected words from the actor that you would lose your concentration and stared into the space like the actor did. The same actor continued with unstable performance throughout the whole play and as a key narrator / character, it really disintegrated the binding elements that are essential to keep the play together. As a result you feel like the actors are just doing each of their own thing. There seemed to be no communications among the characters despite the fact that conversations were being carried out.

Then it comes the chanting…and lots of them. What were they chanting for? There were times they were justified but there were other times you just kept wondering and wondering and they stopped and suddenly turned into dialogues and monologues that weren’t necessarily related to the chanting at all. I know art is abstract but the degree of abstractness exhibited in this production completely fell short to its story telling.

Having said that, there were some really good performances from the actors who actually “got it”. Tahki Saul and Zindzi Okenyo were the stand outs in the whole production. They nailed their monologues and lines perfectly and delivered performances that inhabit their characters completely. However, their presence on the stage was not long enough and it moved back to absurdity once they were off stage. The actor who played Queen Clytemnestra was not bad either with a good range of emotion displayed rightfully at right places. The other actors did a fair to average job but the disappointment was Ursula Mills whom I felt she sometimes really had no idea what the words coming out of her mouth meant, and with only facial expressions of 4, 6 and 7 and gestures 9 and 11 to play with during the whole 2.5 hour, it is really a stamina test for the audience.

Oresteia is an ambitious production that was disintegrated by its own ambition. It is over-stylised and underperformed. I was not surprised that half of the row in front of me was gone when I returned to the audience that night as all three of the other persons in the audience I happened to chat with during the intermission also disappeared from their seats in the far left. In my opinion, if you want to over stylised a production, first you need to get the actors to understand the text completely and this is definitely not the case in Oresteia. And man God forbid we waste milk as they did – there are people starving in other parts of the world you know? If you have spare money and time, I think you might get more out of your money by having a sip at the Wharf Bar.