Written for Time Out
The House of Atreus becomes a house of horrors in Nick Payne’s condensed Electra. There are moments of primal fear, guttural screams that hit you smack in the coccyx, but Carrie Cracknell’s production is largely torpid and over-wrought.
Cracknell is aiming for Sophocles by flashes of lightning, cramming together ninety minutes of snatched, stark images. We see Cath Whitefield's Electra compulsively scrubbing at bloodstained tiles or tearing up floorboards, always haunted by her younger self. It’s brilliantly atmospheric: claustrophobic and sickly, almost asthmatic. Underscored by a tribal pulse, it has the tingle and thrill of a movie trailer.
Accordingly, it’s all scars, no connective tissue; all scares, no suspense. Payne’s is not Electra complex, but Electra pure and raw. His rhythmic text is unembellished, full of visceral and elemental refrains. Blood and earth recur.
To harness its power, however, one needs to push against the writing, either underplaying it with mumbled realism or refusing literalism altogether. Instead, Cracknell’s cast just emote. You’re unlikely to see better eyebrow-and-nostril acting all year – with one credible (and contemporary) exception is Alex Price’s activist Orestes.
Photograph: Simon Kane
0 comments:
Post a Comment