My previous experience in DeLaMar Theatre with badly staged "Murder on the Orient Express" was so upsetting that I started to doubt do I even like live stage plays at all - to correct this, I found something that appealed to me and tried to see it & perhaps new experience will erase the bad taste in my mouth. From what I read online, this play was inspired by ancient Greek play "Trojan Women" by Euripides and that was a good sign - at least this will not be the same audience that was going on "Mamma Mia" in DeLaMar Theatre. So I was ready to try something else.
First I watched 1971. movie filmed in Spain with all-star international cast that included Katharine Hepburn, Vanessa Redgrave and Geneviève Bujold - I quite enjoyed it, even though I don't care much for Hepburn and was delighted with great Greek actress Irene Papas as Helen of Troy, I thought she was magnificent and had a true presence. The movie gave me some idea what to expect in the theatre, obviously it is happening after fall of Troy and each of these famous characters represents part of the myth - we can also see them as any female victims of any war, it is quite a timeless piece.
This time I went with a friend who insisted on having a dinner with dessert & wine before the theatre so we enjoyed our dinner and rolled into a theatre ready to explode (perhaps some self-discipline might be welcome next time around). Even though I had full belly, I was surprisingly awake and alert, because it turned out it was completely in Dutch (I was expecting some subtitles somewhere, after all this is International Theater - luckily I was able to follow it fairly well - it might be that this kept me focused. I enjoyed it very much and thought it was excellent!
First - it was cleverly staged and directed. You don't just bring ancient play in a famous theatre stage and make it another moth-eaten piece: director Mateusz Staniak has everybody in modern clothes and there are just a few props that works perfectly well. To the right are few chairs, these are thrones where main characters sit. To the left is some water with paper ships that represent Greek ships invading Troy - at some point, Cassandra (who nobody listens to) will pour some red liquid into it and make the sea full of blood. In the middle is a pile of ash - these are ashes of everybody who died in the war and during the stage it gets scattered around, a very clever way of explaining the huge number of deaths without actually showing anything. Best of all, there is a large sign that explains when the story unfolds and it is not a linear, start-to-finish play but cleverly it goes from the end to the start, playing with time and showing "5 days before the fall", "2 days before the fall", etc - some scenes are extremely short, other much longer. It is all about how the characters perceived the war and what could have been done to prevent it. Each step back in time, as a flashback, is indicated by a flash of darkness accompanied by heavy electronic music.
As expected, female roles are excellent - for me, the best was Elsie de Brauw as Queen Hecuba - when Greeks suddenly retreat and leave a strange wooden horse behind, it is Hecuba almost giddy with relief, who insist to open the city gates and bring the horse inside, break the gates if you must. She ends wearing black coat and scarf, while carrying the urn with the ashes of her son Hector. There is also a strong-headed Cassandra (Laura De Geest) with her unruly teenaged sister Polyxena (Mona Lahousse) who is tired of everybody always talking about the war. A pregnant Andromache (Nadia Amin) is widow of Hector and after the fall will be just another slave. There are also two young actors playing Paris and his brother Polydoros, neither of them fascinating as female characters as mother hen Hecuba basically pushed them around. The interesting aspect of the story was someone that everybody was talking about but the characters was nowhere to be seen - Helen of Troy, the reason for the war itself - eventually Hecuba admits that she never even existed and that Helen was just a story. I left the theatre giddy with excitement and impressions.
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