They are a fascinating family before the first dominoes of their tragedy collapse and before the murders give birth to murders. Her mother, Critem Nestra, is warm and easy with two little kids gathering around her. His father, Agamemnon, closed his mouth in public, but was playful the moment he passed through the door at the end of the day.
In the sanctuary of their cozy modern home, they look very ordinary. These people love each other. The boy, Orestes, never had a good night’s sleep, but when his bad dreams come, his parents are there to comfort him. And his sister, Ifigenia, is a loved one in a citrus orange dress. She’s young enough to take her long-eared plush toys everywhere, but she’s old enough and smart enough to be already a moral thinker. When her family has venison for dinner, she can’t stand the idea of eating deer.
“It’s a little corpse,” she says.
Is this a deer whose murder has offended the goddess Artemis and calmed the wind on which Agamemnon’s warships depend? Robert Icke’s rushed “Oresteia” The emotionally disastrous retelling of the Aeschylus trilogy at Park Avenue Armory does not get bogged down in such background details of ancient mythology.
What matters is the intolerable ransom that Agamemnon, the commander of the army and a great believer in prophecy, believes he must pay to blow the wind again to win the war. He must kill Ifigenia, a curious, credible, beloved daughter who has nothing to do with killing deer and having nothing to do with waging war.
The prophecy reads, “Only with his hands.” “Children are the price. Fine wind.”
Her innocent life probably ended irreparably in exchange for achieving his political goals-unless her father’s faith in the gods and the advice of a serious man were misguided. .. Of course, ifigenia herself, her mother has never been consulted about this.
“If she doesn’t feel pain, it’s a civilized procedure, it’s clearer and better. So who are the victims?” Says Menelaus, Agamemnon’s brother.
What is the value of a girl’s life? What is the value of her mother’s scratching sadness and bottomless anger at the murder of her child? And, to be precise, because of Agamemnon’s vengeful murder, Clytemnestra was terribly off for years — as if he were a decent man in a difficult position and his own daughter. Was it a consumable item?
This “Orestia” is spoken in four performances over a three-and-a-half hour period, and is so deep that it calms the soul and shifts to the need for blood revenge, resulting in a fresher sorrow. If you’re wondering what’s thematically linking “Hamlet” to Ikke’s other thrilling work, which is being performed in the Armory repertoire this summer, is there. The family suffers from the betrayal of another family. However, while “Hamlet” revolves around the title character, this recentered “Oresteia” is primarily related to the haunted mother Clytemnestra, not to her son Orestes. ..
“All this,” she says as Iphigenian ghosts fly through the house. “All this is about you.”
When this work by the Armory and Almeida Theater was first released, it was intended to star Lia Williams as Crithem Nestra and replay the role played in London, but before the preview began due to injury. I will leave the show.
Anastasia Hill is the Clytemnestra of the Armory, she is wonderful with an incandescent, completely sympathetic interpretation, and in the turmoil of sadness that ages her in the next act, Critem Nestra simply goes on stage. Suitable for spending the entire first break watching sitting. Hill wins many factions over Team Crithem Nestra — the play is good for the unnecessary and cyclical horror of murder and revenge, and the death of another.
In the horrifyingly realistic portrayal of a love marriage destroyed in front of us, Hill is in every corner by Angus Light as Agamemnon. Clytemnestra fights after realizing plans to kill Iphigenia, who was beautifully performed in the performance seen by Alexis Reyforenza, one of the two young actors who share a role. Is so brutal and raw that you can recall its dynamics in the most harmful domestic debate you have ever had.
“This was a man from us who wouldn’t have lived if we hadn’t loved each other,” said Krytemnestra, suing her daughter’s case in the hope that her husband would ask why. rice field. “It’s us that you’re destroying, and you’re doing something that overwhelms our history. When you drop it on us, the whole story before it disappears. It’s a single action. “
By the end of their battle, the flow of intimacy that had been flowing between them for years would be cut off. They are performed for all intents and purposes, become effective immediately, and further emotional access is denied. This does not mean that love has completely disappeared in the injured and complex spiritual honesty of this play.
With a set of chic Hildegard vectors that Norman Foster and Richard Serra would get if they refurbished an ancient castle, “Orestia” is trying to get us involved in a pattern of unnecessary destruction. .. It is reflected in the long glass wall of the set.
The show is almost always full of little weirdness and confusion that comes to light at the end. Slight spoilers: The reason why adult Orestes (Luke Treadaway) monitors much of his behavior from outside the area around his house is because he sued to determine his guilt in the murder of his mother. This is because I am absorbed in the procedure. His memory is often uncertain. The woman asking him (Kirsty Rider) hasn’t even actually purchased the existence of his other sister, Electra (Tiabanon), who colluded with him to kill Krytemnestra. The text probably hints at what she didn’t do. All of them have a mysterious sign.
But that tragedy is most important — driven by a superstitious man who never stopped believing that the life of a little girl wasn’t important and her mother would fight back.
Olestea
Until August 13th at Park Avenue Armory in Manhattan. armoryonpark.org.. Execution time: 3 hours 30 minutes.
