Tragedy allows us to look at the darker sides of ourselves and our society through situations we would rarely, if ever, face in real life. What Stone brings from Greek tragedy into the present is not the myth, but the people. That is why The Oresteia, playing at Bridge Theatre and starring Mary-Louise Parker, David Morrissey, Tom Glynn-Carney, Rosie Sheehy and Archie Madekwe, can still feel like our story today.
Simon Stone has built a career on bringing the past into the present. This time, he turns to a 2,500-year-old tale of revenge: Aeschylus’s The Oresteia, first performed in ancient Greece in 458 BC. A tragedy in which murder and revenge pass from one generation to the next becomes the story of a modern family unable to escape a cycle of violence. Strip away the mythical heroes and gods, and even the Greek chorus, and what remains on stage is a series of horrific murders within one family.
Aeschylus’s The Oresteia is a trilogy made up of Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers and The Eumenides. Stone’s production also unfolds in three parts, with two intervals, and runs for around 3 hours and 30 minutes. But the story does not move in a straight line. It shifts between 2016 and 2026, moving backwards and forwards in time. We see the consequences first, then gradually discover what caused them.
Simon Stone is a writer-director who takes existing works apart and rewrites them in the language of the world he lives in. His scripts develop in rehearsal, with scenes and dialogue shaped through improvisation with the actors. This is more than simply moving an old story into a modern setting. Stone looks for the questions at the heart of the original, then asks how they might play out in people’s lives today.
The Australian director made his name with British audiences through Yerma at the Young Vic, which won widespread acclaim in 2017. Federico García Lorca’s story of a woman in rural Spain in the 1930s became the story of a lifestyle blogger in modern London, played with fierce intensity by Billie Piper. In Medea, seen at the Barbican in 2018, Stone turned the mythical sorceress into a modern pharmacologist. His Phaedra at the National Theatre in 2023 brought an ancient story of destructive desire into the life of a contemporary woman and the political and social world around her. Again and again, Stone takes the tragedies of the past and turns them into questions of desire and choice that could belong to our own lives.
If rewriting classics in his own language is Stone’s signature as a writer, the glass box has become a defining feature of his work as a director. In The Oresteia, too, he places a house on stage that looks somewhere between a show home and a giant greenhouse. Designed by Lizzie Clachan, it is an elegant modern home with high ceilings and huge glass windows. At first, it looks so open and spotless that the glass almost disappears. As the play goes on, however, it becomes marked by the traces of the family’s suffering.
The entire house revolves, revealing the living room, bedrooms, bathroom, upstairs rooms and entrances in turn. Scenes change quickly. A crime scene covered in blood can suddenly become an ordinary living space again, while a character soaked and bleeding moments earlier may reappear neatly dressed, as if nothing happened. Sometimes the only clue that time has shifted is the year displayed on a screen above the stage. As the aftermath of one event and the past that caused it rapidly cross over, we move further back through the family’s wounds, searching for the reason behind each act of revenge.
The fast pace, fluid scene changes and sheer energy of the cast keep the tension alive across the production’s 3 hours and 30 minutes. Dialogue pours out, blood spills, and love, resentment and fear quickly tip into madness. As Augie, Stone’s version of Orestes, Tom Glynn-Carney gives the character a disturbing sense of instability, as though he might explode at any moment. His energy seems to push straight through the glass and into the auditorium. Rosie Sheehy brings a different kind of darkness to Alice, the production’s Electra figure, as she unravels after losing her twin sister and then both her parents. The intensity of the performances pulls us beyond simply watching through the glass and into the chaos of this family.
The dialogue inside the transparent house reaches us through microphones. At times, however, the sound cuts out completely. We watch characters shouting with all their strength but hear nothing, while our attention shifts to what is happening elsewhere in the house. The glass doesn’t let us see everything. Stone also uses it to control what we can hear, where we look and how close we feel to the people inside.
In the original, Agamemnon sacrifices his own daughter, Iphigenia, so that the Greek army can sail for Troy. When Artemis stops the wind, he chooses the success of the military campaign over his daughter’s life. Her death becomes Clytemnestra’s main reason for killing her husband, which in turn leads Orestes to take revenge by killing his mother.
But how can the sacrifice of a daughter be translated into a story set in the present day? Only after more than three hours is the event behind everything we have seen finally revealed. Stone’s The Oresteia takes a choice that many people might recognise and pushes it to its darkest extreme. One decision to put personal success and a larger ambition before a child’s needs tears an entire family apart, and years later returns as another act of violence. There is no curse from the gods and no prophecy that cannot be escaped. Only human choices and their consequences remain.
Tragedy allows us to look at the darker sides of ourselves and our society through situations we would rarely, if ever, face in real life. What Stone brings from Greek tragedy into the present is not the myth, but the people. Those who lived 2,500 years ago also desired, loved, failed and hurt those closest to them. That is why The Oresteia can still feel like our story today.
Stone’s habit of taking an original work apart and rewriting it in his own language can raise questions about how far an adaptation can go before it becomes something else. But theatre is richer for directors willing to take that risk and make stories written thousands of years ago feel as if they belong to us now.
The Oresteia is playing at Bridge Theatre until September 19.
Follow Us