A prudent theatregoer — no hand goes up here, I confess — would have mugged up on the Trojan War and its aftermath before settling into a seat at the Playhouse for After Troy. Considerate producers, by the same token, would have added an aide-mémoire to its key events in the programme.
As it was, there were times when I and others around me in the stalls (they told me) found that Glyn Maxwell’s moving and poetic adaptation of Euripides had us all at sea.
This, of course, is precisely where the victorious Greeks were not in the immediate aftermath of their defeat of the Trojans. With no wind to speed them home to Athens, they are stranded amid the ruins of Troy with the grieving local women who are destined (in most cases) to travel with them as prizes of war.
One focus of the plot is Hecuba (Eve Matheson), who has lost so much in the war and now learns that her son Polydorus, whom she believed safe in the protection of the Thracian king, has perished. This provokes a bloody revenge on the beaming rogue Mestor (Nicolas Tennant) — who has earlier suffered much indignity and downsizing of ego through the abuse of the haughty Agamemnon (the excellent Antony Byrne, pictured).
If Hecuba’s lamentations at times seemed over-the-top, even comic (“Give over, love!”), the same was true of those of the demented Cassandra (Rebecca Smith-Williams), driven to distraction by dread visions of the future that others were destined to disbelieve. By contrast, there was gentle dignity in the suffering of Polyxena (Amy Noble) and Andromache (Hannah Barrie).
Ian Batchelor as the women’s gruff Greek guard Kratos and Oscar Pearce as Talthybius, the messenger and chronicler of their misfortunes, both gave first-class performances under director Alex Clifton.
There are further performances until Saturday: box office, 01865 305305 (www.oxfordplayhouse.com).
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