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CROYDEN'S CORNER
by Margaret Croyden
"Electra"by Sophocles: A Modern Version: Does it Work?
adapted by Frank McGuinness
Ethel Barrymore Theater
243 West 47th Street
212-239-6200
Reviewed December 7, 1998 by Margaret Croyden
One of the problems doing classics on Broadway is that producers
and directors try to make them contemporary--sort of. So they
arrange the staging and the setting in peculiar ways. Sophocles'
"Electra," written thousands of years ago, takes place in Greece
in the midst of a coup d'etat. Agamemnon, the king, has been
murdered and an usurper has taken the throne. Moreover, the king
has been murdered by his wife, Clytemnestra, and her lover,
Aegisthus. Electra, the daughter, swears to avenge her father's
murder and convinces her brother, Orestes, to kill their mother
and her lover. This famous myth, first dramatized in the
"Orestia," a trilogy by Aeschylus, and taken up later by
Sophocles, has been one of the great myths in the cannon of
Western literature and Western civilization. Its influence has
been profound, beginning with Homer's "Iliad" and stretching
thousands of years to Eugene O'Neill's "Mourning Becomes
Electra," not to speak of the so-called Electra syndrome--a
daughter's abnormal love for the father--a phenomenon analyzed by
Freud himself. So it an extraordinary event for this work to be
presented on Broadway.
However, the director, David Leveaux, not contented to let the play speak for itself has, according to his program notes, drawn analogies to the tragedy in Bosnia. Apparently he hoped to render a contemporary lesson that hatred, vengeance, retribution and inter-family violence lead to a never ending cycle of brutality. To make the point, his designer, Johan Engels set the play not in the King's castle in Greece but on a dirt and rubble filled stage signifying no man's land. Center stage is a slab of white wood covered by a dirty sheet to signify a bed, a coffin, a platform (or what?). This becomes a prop for Electra to caress, to talk to, and jump on. Wearing (and sometimes dragging), her father's oversized soldier's coat reminiscent of World War I, Zoe Wanamaker as Electra is particularly odd looking. With her dyed punk haircut and its bald spots tinged with dry blood stains (has she pulled out her hair in desperatiion?), she marches around barefoot, climbs on ladders, digs hands and feet into the dirt floor, throws herself to the ground, lies prostrate in the dirt, climbs onto the slab, or slouches in as odd shaped wreck of a chair. For an hour and a half, she carries on; she argues, screams, scorns, scolds, spits and incessantly repeats her rationale for vengeance, which she mistakes for justice.
Into this dreary scene comes Clytemnestra (Claire Bloom), carefully walking on the dirt ground. She is dressed in an all too obvious blood red gown and a brilliant red velvet cape. Around her neck are jewels. Her hair is badly cut and her dress, ill fitting and unbecoming. No great Queen here. The chorus is made up of three women, two of whom never speak and one (Pat Carroll)looking like a peasant, speaks for all of them.
This ambiance--its mixed clothing, tawdry surroundings, and no man's-land setting--dissipates the play's grandeur and underlying tragedy: the demise of the House of Atreus. It reduces a great myth to a domestic drama of a dysfunctional family with a mad and maddening daughter as its centerpiece. The bitter fruits of the Trojan Wars, where Agamemnon, at the bequest of the Gods, sacrificed his younger daughter, Iphigenia, to conquer the Trojans--the single act that precipitated these terrible consequences--seems to be lost in the verbiage of this production.
To be sure, the tragedy of the war is part of the exposition in the play, and that makes it difficult for the company to create excitement, or conflict. The action is primarily verbal, until the final predictable killings. The main focus is on Electra's incessant hatred--the starting point and the finishing point of the evening. Electra begins her diatribe against her mother at the very beginning of the play and continues in the same vein throughout the hour and a half. This continual hammering is one of the weaknesses of the production. True, the fault may lie in the writing and adaptation of the play, but the actors are obliged to overcome this repetition else the evening becomes boring.
Zoe Wanamaker in the role of Electra, for which she has been acclaimed both in London and by some New York critics, gives an uneven performance. She is clearly a brave technician with a powerful voice and great vocal range that she depends on and uses to excess. She is clearly at home on stage moving rapidly and gracefully. Jumping, running, and falling, she uses her body in imaginative ways. Her emotions stretch from outrage to sadness, to fury and frustration, to despair and melancholy, even sarcastic comic asides expressed in growls, grunts, and gutturals, in shouts, cries, and snivels, and in a variety of voice patterns. But a genuine inner life is missing. And for all her emotional diatribes, Ms. Wanamaker's performance is strangely cold and unmoving. She is not a seamless performer. One sees technique in every move; she is an actress acting the role, being sincere, being angry, being emotional, screaming one minute, whispering another, but clearly she is acting and one becomes fascinated with the performance, not because it is moving or memorable but because it is cunning and theatrical, but not great. And that is a pity. More simplicity would have helped, even silence at times. The steady litany of venom, produces not sympathy for the character but only a curious disbelief--even disinterest.
The counterpoint to Electra's ravings is Chrysothemis, her sister, played by Marin Hinkle, who is somewhat ineffectual in this role. She tries to reason with Electra's obsession to kill the mother, but the actress is unconvincing; her voice is weak and almost inaudible; besides she is overpowered by Ms. Wanamaker's actressey presence.
The rest of the cast is adequate. Claire Bloom, doesn't do too much with her role although she tries to be simple at least. One is reminded of the great Martha Graham who danced the role of Clytemnestra in her stunning ballet depicting the murder of Agamemnon. It is interesting to remember that Martha Graham's costumes, and simple, but grand setting, with its giant rolled out red carpet, captured the essence of the myth in a fraction of a second. And this she did without uttering a word.
Nevertheless, that a great classical play has reached Broadway, despite its weaknesses, is a good thing. But it would be more of a triumph if the director had not tampered with the environment. Audiences can draw its own meaning; it is un-nessesary to inject a contemporary analogy into the production which, by the way, may not be evident to the audience, despite the director's notes in the program. [Croyden]
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