THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
Written and directed by Simon Stone, after Aeschylus and others
Bridge Theatre, London SE1 until September 19, 2026
Watching Simon Stone's latest blistering reworking of a classic work at the Bridge, this time Aeschylus' Oresteia trilogy, I got a feeling of déjà vu. The amazing set (here by Lizzie Clachan) is a stunning glass cube, enclosing a Scandi modern house where an obviously prosperous, designer clad family start the day sniping at one another in a blizzard of sarcasm (sadly here over amplified). The family even includes an activist daughter who despairs of her parent politics and values, and I thought, hold on, am I back watching Stone's Phaedra at the National in 2023? The work on this is superlative, but there are echoes.
As with that piece Stone has taken the kernel of a classic play and fashioned something very modern, packed with modern allusions and tart dialogue. The basic plot still holds: Agamemnon/Christopher's (David Morrissey) sacrifice of his daughter, Iphigenia/Alice (Rosie Sheehy) followed by his murder at the hands of his wife Clytemnestra/Montie (Mary Louise Parker) and subsequently her murder by their avenging son Orestes/Augie (Tom Glynn-Carney), all transposed to a modern metropolitan family in their luxury home in Kent. We also hear about Alice's rebel tearaway twin Isabel who like her mother kicks against the patriarchy. Sheehy plays both and overcooks the Sloane bit.
The moral debate in this version is focused on the fact that Christopher owns a tech company implicated in selling parts for military equipment to the Russians, who have recently bombed and killed children in Syria. Oddly we get screeds about Chechnya and Damascus but not the obvious current one of Gaza, which perhaps is down to a loss of nerve?
This framing ultimately dooms the piece because Chris has not actually killed his daughter (but rather gutlessly embarrassed her at a press conference) yet this provides the motivation for Montie's killing spree. The whole project is trying to impose a 21st century aesthetic and ways of behaviour onto one of the foundational plays in the canon.
Stone plays fast and loose with the chronology which gets dizzying and ultimately drains the tension. Things are not helped by killings being reported before they are dramatized. One bit of relief is the presence of a police detective (Lloyd Hutchinson in scene stealing best) on the trail of the homicidal Augie. He doubles up as Chris's brother Melville.
Glynn-Carney has the impossible task of a character ark which goes from mild mannered kid wondering if Dad could really do wrong to joining up for Afghanistan which then appears to turn him into a demented sadist. That's the patriarchy for you!
Similarly, the wonderful Mary-Louise Parker (making her West End debut) drowns in the challenge of portraying Montie. She has the mordant wit down perfectly, being brilliant at ambivalence (see Showtime's series Weeds), but here she flounders as we never get any purchase on her motives. Did she kill on principle or on a whim? When she slowly tortures her husband to death, she's drunk and haplessly assisted by her lover Jerome (the great John Macmillan, a Stone regular). The frenetic pacing and the lack of credible motivations leave no room for nuance.
For a Greek drama too the piece sorely lacks any sense of inexorable tragedy, and it all ends up like an overheated melodrama – less HBO and more '70s daytime soap but with knives.
Morrissey, who never disappoints, manages to make Chris somewhat sympathetic, which is quite an achievement. He and his brother bring some 'no nonsense' Northern lugubriousness to the piece.
There are no Gods to intervene here, alas, and no moral universe that these characters seem to inhabit, which is part of the problem. The final part of the original is about the playing out of justice and the audience voting on the morality of the murder. Here all we get is Augie being visited in a mental health facility by his soulmate Lorenzo, Jerome's son, who proceeds to just give him an earful. Archie Madekwe is a standout in this role and is a real find.
Robert Icke pulled this piece off brilliantly in a modern version about 10 years ago and the legendary Peter Hall/Tony Harrison version in 1981 gave it all a traditional treatment, but the conventions chosen by Stone here prove an insurmountable barrier for me. The hitching of Gen Z neuroses to the classic in the end makes it all come across as rather crass.
