The Oresteia review – Simon Stone’s patchwork tragedy is a gripping and exasperating epic

Bridge theatre, London
Mary-Louise Parker gives a powerhouse performance in a three-part drama that cuts up Aeschylus’s chronology and adds shades of other plays

Although writer-director Simon Stone has named his play The Oresteia, the credits make clear that this is a drama “after Aeschylus and Others”. The Aeschylus is recognisable here, particularly in the most faithful, and supremely gripping, first of three parts. But the “others” are key too, with many shades of Greek tragedies thrown in, from Antigone to Medea, and maybe even Oedipus Rex.

Agamemnon’s sacrifice of his daughter, Iphigenia, followed by his murder at the hands of his wife, Clytemnestra, and subsequently hers by their avenging son, Orestes, is transposed into modern, metropolitan family life. There is Christopher (David Morrissey), who runs a tech company, his wife Montie (Mary-Louise Parker), an American alpha-type, and their children: Augie (Tom Glynn-Carney), offstage tearaway Isabel and her twin, Alice (Rosie Sheehy). They are so privileged that they speak of Bollinger as a cooking wine, and live in a house that has the corporate look of an upmarket hotel chain.