One of the more popular figures in ancient Greek literature is Elektra (often anglicized as “Electra”), daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, sister of Orestes, Iphegenia, and Chrysothemis. She is a major character in a play by each of the three classic tragic playwrights of the Athenian Dionysian celebrations: The Libation Bearers, by Aeschylus; Electra, by Sophocles; and Electra, by Euripides. The script for each of these plays has, amazingly, survived the millenia since they were written in Athens in the 5th century B.C.E. Each tells basically the same story of the return of Orestes to his home in Argos and his taking revenge, encouraged by Electra, for the murder of their father by their mother. Yet each of the three plays can be quite different, revealing the different dramatic methods and meanings of each of the three men.
We had a few months ago a fascinating production at Washington University of Aeschylus’s trilogy Oresteia, in which The Libation Bearers is the second play. More recently, a new group, Critique Theatre Company, performed Sophocles’ Electra. We await a production of Euripides’ Electra, though a very fine film of the play was directed fifty years ago by Michael Cacoyannis, available on a DVD, and I assume it can be streamed somewhere.
Sophocles expands the dramatic possibilities in Orestes’s return to Argos from exile, now grown and unrecognized by either Clytemnestra or Elektra, with a story of his own death in an Olympic race. (Euripides was to mock in his Elektra the brother and sister recognition scene as depicted by Aeschylus.) This news only increases the despair of his sister, who has waited years now for her brother to return and honor his obligation to their father by killing their mother and her lover and co-murderer Aegistus, their cousin.
Other than the scheming for revenge, Sophocles’ Elektra can be seen as one long lament by Elektra for her father, for her brother’s absence, and for her own lonely and unloved life. It reminded me somewhat of some of those movies – we called them “weepies” and “women’s movies” – from the mid-twentieth century about women whose lives were, for whatever reason but often because of a man, as bad as Elektra’s.
Many of those working on the Critique’s Elektra are recent graduates of Saint Louis University, and moments in their production showed the influence of one of their professors, Lucy Cashion, who in productions she directs often adds some elaborations that may be helpful or not. So at Critique’s Elektra, the opening puzzled me, while some brief, dance-like movements of the cast during the play expanded the emotional depth of those moments. And after that opening, once the cast was using the text of the play as translated by Anne Carson, they spoke those ancient lines like they were thoughts that just occurred to them now, pulling together the world of Elektra and our world.
Spence Lawton directed and designed, setting the play in Elektra’s bedroom in the Argive castle, with remnants of childhood scattered about and of an unhappy present. Lawton and Emma Glose produced this.
As Elektra, Maida Dippel found many ways to mourn and despair. Victoria Thomas’s Klytemnestra was pretty much on edge pretty much of the time. Aegisthus tried to appear confident and in charge as played by Miranda Jagels-Felix. Celeste Gardner’s Orestes was smart and ready for action, and well supported by Laurel Button as his friend Pylades. Alicen Kramer-Moser was an encouraging but calming presence as Orestes’ old tutor. Katie Orr supplied vocal strength as a one-person Chorus, and Emma Glose tried to stay out of the way as Elektra’s sister Chrysothemis. When muscle was needed, Anthony Kramer-Mosse and Ross Rubright supplied it as The Men.
This Electra was a brave effort by the Critique Theatre Company. I hope they continue.
—Bob Wilcox
