[theatre] The Last Days of Troy, Globe, 17-Jun-14
Wednesday, July 2nd, 2014 10:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tamaranthFramed by Zeus and Hera looking back from exile – if exile is modern-day Turkey – Simon Armitage’s 3-hour remix of the Iliad is full of resonant language. (I especially liked Hector ‘glinting and gloating on the walls of Troy’. Of Helen: ‘you’ll be on the arm of the man giving the victory speech, with a cemetery in the background. Downwind.’) The first half of the play is a sequence of dialogues: Agamemnon / Achilles, Zeus / Thetis, Hera / Athena, Hector / Paris, Helen / Andromache etc. In the second half, there were more ensemble scenes.
Lily Cole, as Helen, was scenic but not always audible: her voice didn’t seem very strong. Even Agamemnon (David Birrell) fell foul of the acoustics – a weird doubled echo when he was facing away from us. Jake Fairbrother as Achilles was immensely physical though his body language didn’t always convince. (I can, however, confirm that he did not treat Patroclus as a cousin.)
Some anachronisms worked better than others. “He’ll eat anything: he’s from the North” raised a laugh, but I was less convinced by Patroclus’ insistence that there was ‘no greater insult’ than treating Briseis as an object. If you start treating women as people in Greek mythology (indeed, in much of history), the wheels fall off.
Armitage has the knack of metamorphosing ordinary, plain language into eloquent oratory. The Last Days of Troy, like his translation of the Odyssey, has the feel of oral tradition.
Lily Cole, as Helen, was scenic but not always audible: her voice didn’t seem very strong. Even Agamemnon (David Birrell) fell foul of the acoustics – a weird doubled echo when he was facing away from us. Jake Fairbrother as Achilles was immensely physical though his body language didn’t always convince. (I can, however, confirm that he did not treat Patroclus as a cousin.)
Some anachronisms worked better than others. “He’ll eat anything: he’s from the North” raised a laugh, but I was less convinced by Patroclus’ insistence that there was ‘no greater insult’ than treating Briseis as an object. If you start treating women as people in Greek mythology (indeed, in much of history), the wheels fall off.
Armitage has the knack of metamorphosing ordinary, plain language into eloquent oratory. The Last Days of Troy, like his translation of the Odyssey, has the feel of oral tradition.
