Bloody your hands if your story is being told without you having a say in it. “Dance, dance, furies, lock your arms!”.
This rendition of Electra’s part of Greek mythology, produced and presented by Vertebra Theatre, explores the story of this controversial character, with the legacy it has had in theatre, through the eyes of four actors and a director, who devised and interpreted it: Alexa Komari, Emilie Largier, Masumi Saito, Elena Stamoulakatou, Mayra Sergiou. Sergiou oversaw the concept, the adaptation and the direction as well. On stage, we also see Gregory Emfietzis, who composed the music and plays the violin, the drum and the electronics.
The play introduces us to the pathos of Elektra’s story immediately, through the image of four faceless, red-tinted actors, covered in drapes of the same blood-red colour. Their words, unintelligible, come to the audience distorted, as they wiggle out of the drape-traps. While this happens, the sound of flies can be heard, disturbing, in a dialogue with the soft sound of the bow scratching the violin in very short bursts.
Subsequently, the actors will come in and out of the scene, in a constant dialogue between the discourse that three male authors have constructed around the character, and what their female perspectives are able to make of it. This is put in explicit words by the actors and made visible through their bodies in conflict.
While it would be possible to go through a sense of narrative in the performance, it is clearly not the focus, and that translates into a certain level of encryption and decryption to participate in what is transpiring on stage. That was even more evident when different fragments of the pieces that are referenced came up in their original languages, or when a speech from Clytemnestra justifying her actions is voiced over the bodies of the actors. A curious effect of this encrypted character of the piece is its layers: while being knowledgeable about the history of Electra could be an asset, just letting oneself go into this red mess of bodies struggling to put their message through is definitely a remarkable experience.
If one is to attend this piece, the highlight would be the dialogue between two faceless actors laughing out loud, connected by a tube of clothing, each of them going through a speech, in Greek and French, respectively, in a frenzy manner. Even within the solemn and tragic sense of the play, being infected by laughter seemed inevitable.
All in all, this is a very interesting investigation on what is the character of Electra representing, and how it has been represented before. The matters of gender violence and abusive relationships are also looked upon with subtlety and passion.
Reviewer: Gonzalo Alfredo Sentana
Reviewed: 4th April 2023
North West End UK Rating: ★★★★