Review: The Oresteia, Bridge Theatre 

Central to several Greek tragedies, the story of the house of Atreus starts with cannibalism and ends with the foundation of the Athenian judiciary system. You might say it’s the OG family drama. Simon Stone’s The Oresteia stitches together this long line of murders and assigns them to a dysfunctional modern family, progressively smearing with blood every room of their gilded mansion. The result is a horrifying and compelling tour de force, coming up to three hours of playtime, two of which I spent on the edge of my seat. 

It feels misleading to describe Lizzie Clachan’s creation as a ‘set’. Sleek, majestic, all glass panels and concrete, the house towering mid-stage is in many ways the main character in the production. It’s with the house that the action silently opens, introducing us to each empty room as to a breathing organism, about to collapse on itself as its family tears each other apart, first with words and eventually with knives. 

With the complicity of the house, a voyeuristic relationship is established between audience and family. We first spy on them on the morning of a birthday party, mid-argument. The never-ending stream of bickering threaded through the play veers most often on Isabel, rebel daughter to tech villain Christopher (David Morrissey) and American Montie (Mary-Lousie Parker), sister to troubled teenager Augie (Tom Glynn-Carney), and twin to frustrated twenty-one-year old Alice (Rosie Sheehy). The latter is the self-designated peacekeeper in a household constantly on the verge of atomic warfare. With cousins Jerome (John Macmillan) and Lorenzo (Archie Madekwe) and brother Melville (Lloyd Hutchinson), they weave a convincing portrayal of family life, lulling the audience into a false sense of security before moments of horror.  

Though Parker and Glynn-Carney shine as hysterical avengers, their constant explaining turns even the most horrible murder into a gruesome reenactment of family bickering (my thoughts went to the stage crew, cleaning away gallons of stage blood every other scene). As the more layered Alice, Sheehy is simply a wonder to watch. She switches seamlessly, body and soul, between belly-hurting comedy and unadulterated despair. The insane glint in her eyes as she eggs on Glynn-Carney’s serial killer fantasies might be the most haunting detail of the whole production, and one that requires no stage blood. 

A crude but charming confusion between ‘dis-membering’ and ‘re-membering’ justifies the violent overthrow of chronological continuity, bending the linear succession of events into a suitably claustrophobic cycle of blood. The invisible stage crew deserve another mention for practically magicking house and characters along ten years of family history, through frequent and seemingly impossible set changes. In spite of such fast-paced action, the play eventually starts to drag. The third act brings back monologuing ghosts that would more effectively remain silent. 

Chatty ghosts and gimmicky murders aside, Stone’s Oresteia stages more than a string of violent deaths. Set between 2016 and 2026, it attempts to map the self-perpetrating brutality of one family onto the self-perpetrating brutality of the world. Like the onstage violence, however, the source of this anxiety is often on the nose. A mention of the 2016 presidential candidate, whose election could turn ‘the whole world into a war’, seems unnecessary context for an audience who hasn’t been living in complete isolation for the past ten years. 

Spreading from household into history, the wider scope of this miasma eradicates any possibility of redemption. No dea ex machina turns up in Stone’s version to transform the demons of vengeance into agents of justice; his Orestes ends up in a mental institution, fundamentally unforgiven and completely alone. The audience is sent home to doom-scroll. 

Writer & Director: Simon Stone 
Producer: Wouter van Ransbeek 
Lighting Designer: Nick Schlieper 
Set Designer: Lizzie Clachan 
Sound Designer: Peter Rice 
Costume Designer: Emma White 
Production Manager: Jim Leaver 
Associate Director: Benedict Crosby 
Associate Lighting Designer: Guy Jones 
Costume Supervisor: Anna Josephs 
Props Supervisor: Lily Mollgaard 
Fight Director: Sam Lyon-Behan 

The Oresteia plays at the Bridge Theatre until Saturday 19 September.