Review: Agamemnon by City on a Hill* Productions
by Michael Meigs

Agamemnon as produced by City on a Hill* Productions and directed by David J. Boss is a satisfyingly crunchy rendition of the first part of Aeschylus' Orestia. In this season of Academy Award nominations it might be useful to note that the trilogy won the annual competition at the Greater Dionysian Festival in Athens in 458 B.C.

 

In a chronological sense it's not "the first play in the Western canon," as stated in the program.  Aeschylus wrote between seventy and ninety plays, of which only seven are extant (with three of those comprising the Orestia). The parts of the trilogy were among his last compositions, for he died in Sicily at the age of 70 only three years after presenting them.

 

The Orestia is a defining work in the Western dramatic canon. The fate of Agamemnon has constituted a cautionary tragedy reworked regularly since Aeschylus' time.  Sophocles and Euripides further explored the myths of the fall of the house of Atreus, with the tales of rivalry, cannibalism, war, child sacrifice, the conquest of Troy, treachery, sexual infidelity, prophetic ecstacy, incest, religious conflict and madness.  The story and its figures are deep dyed in Western literary tradition.  It's great stuff.

 

Judging from the words spoken at the Blue Theatre by the company, Peter Meineck's translation is a clear, contemporary version, unlike the quaint language of E.D.A. Morshead in the copy of The Complete Greek Drama by Gates and Eugene O'Neill, Jr. that I've carefully guarded for forty years.  The lengthy choral sections, spoken in unison by gray-bearded elders in the original, have been parceled out  to three chorus figures, all women, who speak individually.  On Tuesday evening one of them had fallen ill, and a male cast member walked through the part, script in hand, in a laudable save of the presentation.  The assignment of choral lines was probably a choice by the director -- unless translator Meineck, both classicist and theatre director, had intervened at the level of the translation.

 

In this towering tragedy Aeschylus puts the royal family of Ateus on a fast track to horror.  A lonely watchman provides a bit of orientation -- we're awaiting news from Troy -- and then sees a distant flaring bonfire that signals victory.  The chorus considers this and Queen Clytemnestra comes out to exult.  She retires.  A messenger from King Agamemnon's recently landed ship arrives, received by chorus and queen.  Agamemnon himself appears, praising the gods for his safe return, bringing behind him the silent, white-gowned figure of his prize, Cassandra, daughter of old Priam of Troy.  Clytemnestra has a crimson carpet spread to receive the king and persuades him to walk barefoot upon it into the palace.  Cassandra stands silent, despite Clytemnestra's pressing invitation to follow.  When left with the chorus, Cassandra bursts out in a prophetic frenzy, foreseeing danger and death.  Eventually calmer, she enters the palace.  We hear a shout of agony and a scream.  Clytemnestra emerges, blood-spattered from carrying the knife she used to murder both king and capitive.  Aegisthus, her conspirator and consort, arrives to exult, reject reproval and join arms with the bloody queen.

 

Got all that?  Mind you, there's a terrific back story (see, for example, all of Homer) and lot of monkey business to come (see Sophocles and Euripides).  But this is blood revenge writ straightforward.

 

For those not familiar with the tale director Boss opens the production with a mime show of the binding of the girl Iphigenia and Agamemnon's ritual murder-sacrifice of his own daughter.  There's an eerie moment as she cowers on an altar, held by two guards while Agamemnon prays audibly in Greek, offering his dagger to the gods.

 

Even in smooth, contemporary translation Aeschylus' rhetoric and images are challenging.  No casual remarks here; these characters are dealing with transcendent, complicated concepts and expression.

 

The principals handle it very well.  Kimberley Mead as Clytemnestra had impressively mastered the language and joined it to gesture and presence.  She gave the queen a lively, alluring murderous intelligence in which every syllable had meaning.  Daniel Yiogious Rigney was also at home in the blank verse; the smooth incomprehension of his hauteur arose not from the actor but from the arrogance and self-love of the character.  Emily Everidge as the visionary Cassandra was frenetic but exemplary in her clarity and force.

 

Chorus members clearly knew their lines, with the honorable exception of the stand-in, but their expression remained much of the time at the level of chanting rather than endowing their difficult speech with thought.   The actor playing the messenger -- not identified properly in the program but probably Robert Moncrieff -- mastered word and message but was given some awkward, distracting business to perform (why remove his shoes and then immediately put them back on?).

 

 Greek drama in jeans is a bit distracting, and Ania Upstill's costuming concept was not consistent.  Mead as Clytemnestra was gorgeously coiffed and clad in appropriate costume.  Rigney had acceptable kingly costume, especially for an audience willingly playing along with the illusion, but he had to shed cowboy boots in order to walk on the purple.

 

In that context, Bradley Wright as the ranting Aegisthus, arriving with clean hands after the murder to take possession of palace and queen, put me in mind of a really sneaky cowpoke debarking from his Ford F-150.  That impression is unfair, for he was forceful and emphatic, just the sort of bad guy you love to hate.

 

The final tableau was impressive and not too far off from the historic practice:  the dead king lay revealed at center stage, and the blood-smeared Clytemnestra smoothly linked arms with her paramour.

 

All in all, this Agamemnon was indeed a vigorous representation of a story of noble figures, evoking pity and fear.  Aristotle told us in his Poetics that those are exactly the elements for the poetic catharsis of tragedy.  City on a Hill* Productions (complete with their unexplained, self-appointed asterisk) have met Aeschylus and have come away bloodied but unbowed.  For their presumption and achievement, much thanks.

 

EXTRA

Click to view program sheet for Agamemnon by City on a Hill* Productions

 

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Agamemnon
by Aeschylus
City on a Hill* Productions