Theatre review: Diary of a Madman

A loose adaptation from Gogol, Diary of a Madman does deal with mental illness, but it doesn’t do so explicitly for its first hour, instead setting a detailed scene. Al Smith’s Scottish transposition takes inspiration from the popular metaphor of the Forth Bridge, said to take so long to paint that by the time it’s done the other end needs starting again. Here it becomes the job of a single family who’ve been doing it for generations, Pop Sheeran (Liam Brennan) taking a year to put on each new coat before going back to the start. His son’s unable to help him at the moment so the company that manages the bridge has sent along Matthew (Guy Clark,) an English post-grad at Edinburgh University, whose thesis studies the effectiveness of a new formulation of paint intended to cut down on all this work. In one of those plot-driving coincidences, Matthew then discovers that Pop’s teenage daughter Sophie (Louise McMenemy) is the girl he slept with a few weeks earlier.

Theatre review: The Iphigenia Quartet - Agamemnon and Clytemnestra

Two more points of view on the story of Euripides' Iphigenia at Aulis at the Gate as part of The Iphigenia Quartet; you can read my review of Iphigenia and Chorus here, but tonight Caroline Bird gets arguably the toughest job, of trying to see things from the perspective of Agamemnon. Although it's his brother whose wife has been abducted, Agamemnon (Andrew French) is leading the Greek charge to get her back, and is therefore the man in the spotlight. Bird focuses on him not as a bloodthirsty villain but as a rather weak man buffeted by circumstance and unable or unwilling to stand up to it. As the play begins he's consented to the sacrifice of his daughter but changed his mind, sending a letter to his wife telling her to stay away. It's too late, of course, and besides the Messenger (Louise McMenemy) is brutally pragmatic about the Greek cause and makes sure the letter doesn't reach Clytemnestra.

Theatre review: The Iphigenia Quartet - Iphigenia and Chorus

Greek tragedy continues to get reinvented, and after a Medea last year that told the story from a very different point of view than usual, the Gate now turns to the story of Iphigenia, and asks four different writers to each put their own spin on the myth behind Euripides' Iphigenia at Aulis, that also forms the background to the Oresteia: The Greek ships are waiting to sail out to Troy, but the war can't begin if the army never gets there, and the winds stubbornly refuse to blow. It turns out the goddess Artemis is pissed off with General Agamemnon for killing one of her sacred stags while hunting; she'll only let the winds blow if he sacrifices his daughter Iphigenia. What happens next varies depending on the version of the myth, but blood always ends up getting spilt, and Agamemnon gets his war.