It's rather rare to see a classical Greek tragedy presented in other than a museum-style or strictly academic production and even more rare to see one given a translation that makes it feel informal, accessible and relevant. Frank McGinness's adaptation of Sophocles' “Electra” is strikingly clear and powerful, explicating the complex history of murder and treachery within the damned house of Atreus and allowing the characters to exist on a human scale while suffering to an epic degree. The complex relationships and histories are readily understood and the speech feels natural and organic while still retaining the rhythms and resonances of poetic verse. The chorus (of three women) acts like a kind of internal echo to the voices of the principles, and the production wisely includes elements of physical movement and mimetic action to acknowledge the musical and dance elements of classical drama.
This production, directed by Sheila Daniels to emphasize the personal intensity and emotional depth of the drama, is led by a devastating performance by Marya Sea Kaminsky as Electra. As her mother, and the murderer of her father, Clytemnestra is played with elegant cruelty and a gratifying complexity by Ellen Boyle. I particularly appreciated the way in which she becomes more human, more sympathetic not by explaining or justifying her terrible crimes, but by opening the questions of moral ambiguity between justice and revenge, between murder and self-interest. In that way her stature becomes a fitting object for the depth of Electra's hatred. Needing to believe that only blood spilled can reconcile blood spilled, Clytemnestra demands of Electra a greater appreciation for the interplay between fate and personal action, between understanding the actions of the gods and understanding the choices of the self. Similarly, Susannah Millonzi is quite excellent as Electra's sister, Chrysothemis, beginning as a rather timid, acquiescing child of the house and rapidly emerging as a self-directed, powerful agent of vengeance.
The long banished and presumed dead brother Orestes (Darragh Kennan) is played with a decency and earnestness that makes Electra's devotion to him seem appropriate, but didn't seem to have the lethal edge embodied by the women. Similarly, the despised Aegisthus (John Bogar) felt too insubstantial and contrived to fully deserve the depth of Electra's hatred. The old tutor and servant to Orestes was given deep credibility and the earned humor of broad experience by Todd Jefferson Moore.
At the center of all this, however, is the stunning performance of Marya Sea Kaminsky. She is an actress who puts everything on the stage, withholds nothing in exposing her misery or the defilement of her measureless enmity. As Electra is progressively degraded by her anger and bloodlust, she becomes more physically bruised and dirtied by the world in which she lives, by the dirt and vulgarity in which she rolls around like a pig in a sty. Her physicality, the way in which she throws herself at the chain-link fence behind her, or beats her breast in anguish, or screams her pain from a place so deep it threatens to turn her inside out, every movement is an expression of humanity itself doing battle with fate, with the injustice of others and the slow-spreading soul poison of revenge.
“Electra” is an excellent production. It was a display of all the competence and experience of an ensemble fully up to the demands of classical theatre. Sheila Daniels had a firm grasp on how to make this intimate family horror achieve the grandeur of tragedy. Marya Sea Kaminsky had the heart and soul to make us draw near enough to knows its expanse. This was a striking reminder of how a story 2,500 years old still has a great deal to do with a world filled with brutality, suffering and the inarticulate, visceral desire to make an eye for an eye result in something other than simply greater loss.
PICTURED ABOVE: Marya Sea Kaminski as Electra and Ellen Boyle as Clytemnestra.
PHOTO BY: John Ulman
