Theatre review: The Suppliant Women

The Oresteia is the only complete surviving Aeschylus trilogy, and consequently his most-performed work, but a couple of other individual plays of his are also extant; The Suppliant Women is the first in another sequence the rest of which has been lost. Of course, the same can be said of many of the plays by later writers that are still performed regularly, but Ramin Gray’s production, which goes right back to theatre’s early roots, quickly shows why this one might be seen as less ripe for reinvention than others. The titular women, a community chorus led by Gemma May Rees, are the Danaids, the Egyptian daughters of Danaos (Omar Ebrahim.) They have been ordered by the king Aegyptos to marry their first cousins, and they’ve fled Egypt with their father to escape the forced marriages. They trace their lineage to Argos, and one of Zeus’ various bestiality-themed extra-marital affairs, so that’s where they’ve sailed to seek asylum.

Theatre review: Winter Solstice

As has become increasingly apparent over the last few years, the rest of the world doesn't seem to think Gemany might have any insights on fascism worth listening to. But the Germans, bless them, keep trying, with the latest warning coming from Roland Schimmelpfennig, whose Winter Solstice comes to the Orange Tree in a translation by David Tushingham. An upper middle class couple in a household we're told has never voted for a conservative party, Bettina (Laura Rogers) is a director of arthouse films nobody particularly wants to watch, while her husband Albert (Dominic Rowan) is a popular historian who's written a number of hit books. Both are having affairs, Bettina with Albert's best friend Konrad (Milo Twomey,) and the family tensions are particularly fraught as they wait for Bettina's mother to arrive.

Theatre review: The Events

David Greig's The Events features just two actors but the stage of the Maria is pretty full as the play calls for a choir - Ramin Gray's production brings in a different community choir every night, tonight the Morris Folk Choir from Islington. They provide, of course, a musical backing as well as reading in additional lines on occasion but their presence takes on a greater significance as the story unfolds. Claire (Neve McIntosh) is a lesbian vicar running a multicultural choir, and as such might as well be the poster girl for everything the far right hates - indeed an extremist party once listed the choir as one of the things that's wrong with Britain on its website. But for The Boy (Rudi Dharmalingam) hating them from afar wasn't enough, and it quickly becomes apparent that Claire is the survivor of his act of violence.