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Oresteia
Orestes' parents are at war. A family drama spanning several decades, a huge, moving, bloody saga, Aeschylus' greatest and final play asks whether justice can ever be done - and continues to resonate more than two millennia after it was written.Following Mr Burns and 1984, Almeida Associate Director Robert Icke radically reimagines Oresteia for the modern stage, in its first major London production in more than a decade. Lia Williams returns to the Almeida as Klytemnestra.
132 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 5, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews
October 4, 2023
i feel like i’ve just been electrocuted
April 6, 2023
wow. wow. wow. wow. WOW. i- like - what -
100/10
100/10
November 20, 2023
I've read Robert Icke's origin story in interviews.
Dragged away from video games long enough to see Shakespeare performed live. The entire course of his life subsequently changed.
My story is the same. I saw Icke's Oresteia performed when I was fifteen. I left home daydreaming about some game I'd just bought and ended it having a full mental breakdown in a restaurant. This play struck me like a bell and I still ring with it a decade later. Shakespeare/Icke = Icke/Me.
At the heart of tragedy is love. If the characters don't love each other, it's not a tragedy, it's a transaction. That's why Icke nails Agamemnon. The play begins with content taken from Iphigenia at Aulis by Euripides, and this deviation from Aeschylus' original scheme is essential. It humanizes Agamemnon, makes him into a person who can be loved, but at the same time, one who can be feared, in the way only the people we love can be feared. He is a patriarch in the biblical model; devoutly faithful to his god, terrible in anger, stern in the enforcement of tradition.
His relationship with Clytemnestra is written with depth and complexity. Here are two people who have lived together, who have argued before and resolved those arguments. They have studied the meteorology of each other. The early scenes with the pair crackle; and not just with our own foreknowledge. These are big characters, and they wear the weight of their responsibilities like suicide vests.
Let's double back to 'biblical'. Icke is drawing on more than one child-sacrifice classic. Abraham and Isaac are splattered all over the text. In the original, there are at least three Gods in play; Artemis (who demands the sacrifice of Iphigenia), Apollo (who demands Orestes avenge his father), and Athena (who mediates the trial of Orestes). Icke distills them into one. 'God' in the Judeo-Christian sense.
It's the first word of the play.
Greek tragedy was written in collaboration with the gods. They serve as inciting incident, as spectators and hecklers, and finally as the resolving authority. But Greek gods are not our gods, and though we find them fascinating as characters, they can never be our gods. Greek gods always fall flat in translation. The audience is not wired on the same cocktail of pre-modern awe, anxiety, hardship, reverence. We are sipping a different Kool-Aid entirely.
Icke's God is modern, not Greek. Silent, unknowable, and for the most part entirely absent. Written into cultures and family trees as a guiding principle, irrational but unshakeable, like a fear of the dark. This is a God tied up with madness, perhaps indistinguishable from it, never really there.
Before the characters, before the dialogue, before the subtle dramaturgical changes that mark Icke's skill, it's this epistemological update that shows the play's genius. It brings the tragedy home in a way no pure translation could. This is the modern Oresteia. There is no need for another.
And that's all just the first five pages.
Helen Lewis writes, "Men have a way of becoming women in the plays of Robert Icke." Orestes becomes Electra, and Electra becomes Iphigenia. Iphigenia's saffron dress is passed between the three children like flu in a nursery. In a story tangled up in the guts of gender relations, the collapse of gender binaries is an essential part of the tragedy's catharsis.
The Oresteia has always been a play about gender. The Greek original has been interpreted as a justification of patriarchal order; Orestes returns to correct an unnatural inversion of social norms. This act is codified by Apollo's defence of patriarchy at Orestes' trial.
Icke places the burden of determining innocence and guilt (and thus the final word on gender) on the audience. At least, superficially. No matter how many times the game is played, how many times the audience is told to 'hold the answer in your mind', Orestes is always found innocent. The arguments of the lawyers mean nothing. It's the illusion of choice that matters. The enforcement of patriarchy is not the task of gods and heroes, but of a collective, Foucaultian truth regime, in which we are all complicit. When it comes to it, we were always going to choose this. As Clytemnesta says, 'We have wrought a net which holds the world.'
And so the cathartic dissolution of gender is undone. The world stamps itself firmly back down. We are left asking, like Orestes, 'What do I do? What do I do?'
Icke loves politicised families. He returns to the idea in his Hamlet and his Oresteia is no different. Agamemnon and Clytemnestra have public and private faces. This manifests in Orestes, who, in his own defence, flip-flops between the personal 'I didn't do it' and the political 'It had to be done'. The final result; the muddying of all truth beyond hope of rediscovery, the complete rejection of a 'right' answer. Icke's Orestes is a psychological masterpiece. And such a pathetic little meow-meow by the end that you can't help but grieve for him.
The play is apparently 'anti-war' (I do not know of many 'pro-war' plays. Let the battle begin) but this does not matter. What's important is that the war, and its pre-requisite sacrifice, are internally justified. Agamemnon spends the first act justifying it to himself and by extension, the audience. This is politics; not a group of greedy men scheming to get more stuff, but ordinary people, using a very limited toolbox to navigate diverse problems. Hammers producing nails et cetera. We crack our reason like a glowstick and try to navigate the night.
Icke makes it clear, there was no right answer. If there had been, love would have sniffed it out. And as we know, without love, there is no tragedy.
All this, not to mention the writing, which is sharp, sustained, and drops so many bangers in quick succession it feels like an air raid.
Icke's Oresteia is the definition of a classic. When I give five stars, this is what I mean.
Dragged away from video games long enough to see Shakespeare performed live. The entire course of his life subsequently changed.
My story is the same. I saw Icke's Oresteia performed when I was fifteen. I left home daydreaming about some game I'd just bought and ended it having a full mental breakdown in a restaurant. This play struck me like a bell and I still ring with it a decade later. Shakespeare/Icke = Icke/Me.
At the heart of tragedy is love. If the characters don't love each other, it's not a tragedy, it's a transaction. That's why Icke nails Agamemnon. The play begins with content taken from Iphigenia at Aulis by Euripides, and this deviation from Aeschylus' original scheme is essential. It humanizes Agamemnon, makes him into a person who can be loved, but at the same time, one who can be feared, in the way only the people we love can be feared. He is a patriarch in the biblical model; devoutly faithful to his god, terrible in anger, stern in the enforcement of tradition.
His relationship with Clytemnestra is written with depth and complexity. Here are two people who have lived together, who have argued before and resolved those arguments. They have studied the meteorology of each other. The early scenes with the pair crackle; and not just with our own foreknowledge. These are big characters, and they wear the weight of their responsibilities like suicide vests.
Let's double back to 'biblical'. Icke is drawing on more than one child-sacrifice classic. Abraham and Isaac are splattered all over the text. In the original, there are at least three Gods in play; Artemis (who demands the sacrifice of Iphigenia), Apollo (who demands Orestes avenge his father), and Athena (who mediates the trial of Orestes). Icke distills them into one. 'God' in the Judeo-Christian sense.
It's the first word of the play.
Greek tragedy was written in collaboration with the gods. They serve as inciting incident, as spectators and hecklers, and finally as the resolving authority. But Greek gods are not our gods, and though we find them fascinating as characters, they can never be our gods. Greek gods always fall flat in translation. The audience is not wired on the same cocktail of pre-modern awe, anxiety, hardship, reverence. We are sipping a different Kool-Aid entirely.
Icke's God is modern, not Greek. Silent, unknowable, and for the most part entirely absent. Written into cultures and family trees as a guiding principle, irrational but unshakeable, like a fear of the dark. This is a God tied up with madness, perhaps indistinguishable from it, never really there.
Before the characters, before the dialogue, before the subtle dramaturgical changes that mark Icke's skill, it's this epistemological update that shows the play's genius. It brings the tragedy home in a way no pure translation could. This is the modern Oresteia. There is no need for another.
And that's all just the first five pages.
Helen Lewis writes, "Men have a way of becoming women in the plays of Robert Icke." Orestes becomes Electra, and Electra becomes Iphigenia. Iphigenia's saffron dress is passed between the three children like flu in a nursery. In a story tangled up in the guts of gender relations, the collapse of gender binaries is an essential part of the tragedy's catharsis.
The Oresteia has always been a play about gender. The Greek original has been interpreted as a justification of patriarchal order; Orestes returns to correct an unnatural inversion of social norms. This act is codified by Apollo's defence of patriarchy at Orestes' trial.
Icke places the burden of determining innocence and guilt (and thus the final word on gender) on the audience. At least, superficially. No matter how many times the game is played, how many times the audience is told to 'hold the answer in your mind', Orestes is always found innocent. The arguments of the lawyers mean nothing. It's the illusion of choice that matters. The enforcement of patriarchy is not the task of gods and heroes, but of a collective, Foucaultian truth regime, in which we are all complicit. When it comes to it, we were always going to choose this. As Clytemnesta says, 'We have wrought a net which holds the world.'
And so the cathartic dissolution of gender is undone. The world stamps itself firmly back down. We are left asking, like Orestes, 'What do I do? What do I do?'
Icke loves politicised families. He returns to the idea in his Hamlet and his Oresteia is no different. Agamemnon and Clytemnestra have public and private faces. This manifests in Orestes, who, in his own defence, flip-flops between the personal 'I didn't do it' and the political 'It had to be done'. The final result; the muddying of all truth beyond hope of rediscovery, the complete rejection of a 'right' answer. Icke's Orestes is a psychological masterpiece. And such a pathetic little meow-meow by the end that you can't help but grieve for him.
The play is apparently 'anti-war' (I do not know of many 'pro-war' plays. Let the battle begin) but this does not matter. What's important is that the war, and its pre-requisite sacrifice, are internally justified. Agamemnon spends the first act justifying it to himself and by extension, the audience. This is politics; not a group of greedy men scheming to get more stuff, but ordinary people, using a very limited toolbox to navigate diverse problems. Hammers producing nails et cetera. We crack our reason like a glowstick and try to navigate the night.
Icke makes it clear, there was no right answer. If there had been, love would have sniffed it out. And as we know, without love, there is no tragedy.
All this, not to mention the writing, which is sharp, sustained, and drops so many bangers in quick succession it feels like an air raid.
Icke's Oresteia is the definition of a classic. When I give five stars, this is what I mean.
July 16, 2023
The war came home. This is what he did: this is the war that put food on our table. This is how it looks. What did you think was inside that word? You know this is what happens, what it looks like, this is the human animal panicking as the cord is cut--and you can look away but he did this thing, in your name, to our enemies, and he did it to our daughter, did this to her, set the thing in motion, and now just is the balance of our act.
the way this contains and expands on every single motif from the original oresteia while also being even more strikingly antiwar. the way this is such a vivid blotchy confusing feverish depiction of mental illness and trauma and grief. the fact that this is the source text of "This was always going to happen. She's been dead since the beginning." the ENDING. if you are an oresteia fan and you haven't read this i'm fucking begging you to read this right the fuck now. if you aren't an oresteia fan get well soon
the way this contains and expands on every single motif from the original oresteia while also being even more strikingly antiwar. the way this is such a vivid blotchy confusing feverish depiction of mental illness and trauma and grief. the fact that this is the source text of "This was always going to happen. She's been dead since the beginning." the ENDING. if you are an oresteia fan and you haven't read this i'm fucking begging you to read this right the fuck now. if you aren't an oresteia fan get well soon
August 30, 2023
An incredibly impressive adaption. I had to take a break between each act it was so heavy. Really interesting ideas and interpretations of the original text. Glad I read this, and I imagine it must be fantastic to watch performed.
January 8, 2020
One of if not the best adaption I've read of the Oresteia. THIS is how you modernize an ancient play-- a popular trend as of late yet one which rarely pulls it off. I'm sure the time period is more evident while actually watching it performed, but when reading it I was able to imagine the story still taking place in ancient times as easily as I could modern, which is a masterful feat in itself. When you're a fan of the source material, that's what you want to be reading more of, which is often why adaptions that try to be too modern, changing a multitude of places and people in the process, fall flat with me. This version, however, hit the sweet spot in that regard.
The characterizations in this adaption was my favorite thing about it. I feel like Icke is one of the few authors who really understood the nuance and complexity of Agamemnon's situation in Iphigenia in Aulis because he does a great job of making him a sympathetic character while still making him quite flawed. I especially loved the elaboration on the relationship between Agamemnon and Clytemnestra-- too often adaptions try to make them a loveless couple, which takes a large amount of the tragedy away from their story in my opinion. A loving couple whose life together is shattered by the sacrifice of their child has far more emotional resonance to it than a miserable marriage made even more miserable still. Hats off to Icke for being one of the first I've seen to understand that.
In general, I think this version does a great job of making the reader question who was 'right', and also gives a sense of how futile it is to ask such a simple question as that.
That said, there were a few minor things I would have liked done differently. Icke writes Iphigenia as a young girl, about 7 I think? And it takes something away from the story when the sacrifice is of a little girl who has no idea what's going on, versus a young teenager (as in IoA) who goes through complicated emotions of her own when she learns of her fate. Given how wonderful his characterization is with the rest of the family, I would have loved to read his version of a somewhat older Iphigenia.
My other mild disappointment was his use of Menelaus' character. As in IoA, Menelaus is there to encourage an uncertain Agamemnon to go through with the sacrifice. However, in IoA, Menelaus later has a change of heart, and there is a sad scene between the brothers as they forgive each other for the strife this caused between them and fruitlessly try to find a way to undo things. Again, this extra nuance in Menelaus' character would have been nice to see, played against this compelling Agamemnon. Furthermore, Menelaus' interactions with Orestes later in the Oresteia are also something I would have liked to see Icke's take on, but after the IoA portion of this adaption, everything feels a bit more rushed.
That said, my complaints are basically that I would have liked to see more built upon this already fantastic base, so for that reason I don't take off any stars. Definitely going to be my go-to recommendation from now on for Oresteia adaptions!
The characterizations in this adaption was my favorite thing about it. I feel like Icke is one of the few authors who really understood the nuance and complexity of Agamemnon's situation in Iphigenia in Aulis because he does a great job of making him a sympathetic character while still making him quite flawed. I especially loved the elaboration on the relationship between Agamemnon and Clytemnestra-- too often adaptions try to make them a loveless couple, which takes a large amount of the tragedy away from their story in my opinion. A loving couple whose life together is shattered by the sacrifice of their child has far more emotional resonance to it than a miserable marriage made even more miserable still. Hats off to Icke for being one of the first I've seen to understand that.
In general, I think this version does a great job of making the reader question who was 'right', and also gives a sense of how futile it is to ask such a simple question as that.
That said, there were a few minor things I would have liked done differently. Icke writes Iphigenia as a young girl, about 7 I think? And it takes something away from the story when the sacrifice is of a little girl who has no idea what's going on, versus a young teenager (as in IoA) who goes through complicated emotions of her own when she learns of her fate. Given how wonderful his characterization is with the rest of the family, I would have loved to read his version of a somewhat older Iphigenia.
My other mild disappointment was his use of Menelaus' character. As in IoA, Menelaus is there to encourage an uncertain Agamemnon to go through with the sacrifice. However, in IoA, Menelaus later has a change of heart, and there is a sad scene between the brothers as they forgive each other for the strife this caused between them and fruitlessly try to find a way to undo things. Again, this extra nuance in Menelaus' character would have been nice to see, played against this compelling Agamemnon. Furthermore, Menelaus' interactions with Orestes later in the Oresteia are also something I would have liked to see Icke's take on, but after the IoA portion of this adaption, everything feels a bit more rushed.
That said, my complaints are basically that I would have liked to see more built upon this already fantastic base, so for that reason I don't take off any stars. Definitely going to be my go-to recommendation from now on for Oresteia adaptions!
December 4, 2023
i saw this performed at depaul university in may of 2019; i have thought about it probably every single day since. a greek tragedy so masterfully transcended into modern language, with modern ideals, the oresteia is a moving, bloody saga that will pull you with every line. it's not worth it to read without having seen it, honestly, and i would give every penny i have to my name to see this performed again. the almost claustrophobic ending and spiral of insanity of almost every major character was evident and i can still hear the shrieks and stomps of the fury underscoring the trial. this is a masterpiece. i shall have to read a translation of the original greek tragedy.
May 9, 2024
Devastating but amazing reworking of the original.
July 22, 2024
you see i didn’t think it was possible to shock me with a plot twist in an oresteia retelling. because. i mean. it’s the oresteia. as it turns out i was Wrong i am Shocked i will never be the same again. robert icke call me i just want to talk
February 10, 2025
Could only find act 1 - very simply put but interesting and dynamic nonetheless!!
March 2, 2025
ti kan koritsia
May 4, 2021
WOMAN
She’s gone
Do you feel / alright?
AGAMEMNON
I feel like I’ve done something so wrong that my whole life, my family, nothing will be able to—the worst mistake. The worst mistake. I got it wrong. It was wrong. It was wrong.
—
Some of the most INCREDIBLE writing I’ve read in any play ever, even without considering the sheer brilliance of the adaptation itself. Icke’s choices are heartbreakingly perfect; the focus on Agamemnon himself and his thoughts on the eventual sacrifice of Iphigenia is such a major deviation from the original work and yet, now, any adaptation without that initial focus will without a doubt feel like its lacking something to me.
I can’t stop thinking about the repetition of specific phrases all throughout, specifically “She was dead from the beginning” and how it doesn’t JUST apply to Iphigenia. All versions of The Oresteia are obviously about the cycles of abuse, but I doubt any adaptation or translation hammers it home as thoroughly as this one, where Orestes’ whole character revolves around the strain on his mental health that the trauma he’s lived through has done to him. When he kills his mother, he’s dissociated from himself to the point of believing his sister, Electra, did it. And then when he’s questioned by the Furies and the representations of his parents, he gets told by Klytemnestra something eerily similar to what she tells her husband when discussing his attempts to rationalize murdering their daughter—the idea that if Orestes had to keep it all a secret, he had to know it was wrong.
And I won’t even get started on Orestes and Electra in this. Like holy FUCK Robert Icke you’re a fucking GENIUS. Its about trauma and gender and being extremely mentally ill in a way that means psychiatrists WILL try to demonize you (as proven by the Doctor in the court case) and I absolutely lost my fucking mind when THAT other shoe dropped.
Oh and the whole imagery of Iphigenia’s saffron dress too...........how Electra wears it, and then Cassandra, and then the stage directions imply that at one point Orestes could be as well........GDDDDDDD Jesus FUCK Robert Icke I’m going to be thinking about this shit for SO fucking long I really need to reread it like VERY soon but far more carefully and w full context because I KNOW it’s an excellently constructed piece and I need to sink my teeth into it properly
Anyway TRULY excellent literature I can’t recommend enough. And also it’s about HBO’s Succession.
—
5/4/2021 reread
SOMEHOW EVEN BETTER THE SECOND TIME AROUND
She’s gone
Do you feel / alright?
AGAMEMNON
I feel like I’ve done something so wrong that my whole life, my family, nothing will be able to—the worst mistake. The worst mistake. I got it wrong. It was wrong. It was wrong.
—
Some of the most INCREDIBLE writing I’ve read in any play ever, even without considering the sheer brilliance of the adaptation itself. Icke’s choices are heartbreakingly perfect; the focus on Agamemnon himself and his thoughts on the eventual sacrifice of Iphigenia is such a major deviation from the original work and yet, now, any adaptation without that initial focus will without a doubt feel like its lacking something to me.
I can’t stop thinking about the repetition of specific phrases all throughout, specifically “She was dead from the beginning” and how it doesn’t JUST apply to Iphigenia. All versions of The Oresteia are obviously about the cycles of abuse, but I doubt any adaptation or translation hammers it home as thoroughly as this one, where Orestes’ whole character revolves around the strain on his mental health that the trauma he’s lived through has done to him. When he kills his mother, he’s dissociated from himself to the point of believing his sister, Electra, did it. And then when he’s questioned by the Furies and the representations of his parents, he gets told by Klytemnestra something eerily similar to what she tells her husband when discussing his attempts to rationalize murdering their daughter—the idea that if Orestes had to keep it all a secret, he had to know it was wrong.
And I won’t even get started on Orestes and Electra in this. Like holy FUCK Robert Icke you’re a fucking GENIUS. Its about trauma and gender and being extremely mentally ill in a way that means psychiatrists WILL try to demonize you (as proven by the Doctor in the court case) and I absolutely lost my fucking mind when THAT other shoe dropped.
Oh and the whole imagery of Iphigenia’s saffron dress too...........how Electra wears it, and then Cassandra, and then the stage directions imply that at one point Orestes could be as well........GDDDDDDD Jesus FUCK Robert Icke I’m going to be thinking about this shit for SO fucking long I really need to reread it like VERY soon but far more carefully and w full context because I KNOW it’s an excellently constructed piece and I need to sink my teeth into it properly
Anyway TRULY excellent literature I can’t recommend enough. And also it’s about HBO’s Succession.
—
5/4/2021 reread
SOMEHOW EVEN BETTER THE SECOND TIME AROUND
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 16, 2017
4.5 stars
The opening section of Icke's Oresteia is one of the best to any play I've ever read. It's an adaptation of the oft-forgotten Iphigenia in Aulis, where war general Agamemnon learns that he has to sacrifice his beloved eldest daughter in order to save thousands of Greek lives. In classic renderings, Iphigenia is a teenager who eventually bravely decides that her life must be sacrificed. In Icke's rendering, she is an adorable seven-year-old who trusts her parents implicitly. The flair and imagination with which Icke shifts the action from Ancient Greece to modern-day chic, glassy London is breathtaking. His Clytemnestra is a both terrifying and wonderful creation, a city mother who adores her husband and gradually sours into pure hatred when she learns that she can't protect her daughter. The characters are wonderfully complex. All this carries over beautifully into Agamemnon, the next part of the Greek series, where Clytemnestra awaits her husband return and plots...and plots...and plots...
Unfortunately, the next two parts of this quartet lose a lot of their power once Agamemnon is dead (spoiler alert?) and the action shifts much more decisively away from his and Clytemnestra's marriage to the lives of their children, Orestes and Electra. Largely because the structure of The Libation Bearers/Electra demands that Clytemnestra hovers around in the background as a monster, offending both grieving siblings, the heart of the previous two sections is lost and then fades out altogether with an almost offensively stupid twist - unless I missed something? (I should note that I've never seen this play, only read it, but I would love to.)
The twist in question is the revelation that . I am completely open to the idea that I missed something obvious in the play, but I found this an even stupider and blander take on this usual reductive twist. It doesn't help that I've read another version of this story which uses this twist, only the genders are reversed, which I found at least an improvement. At least Oresteia remains solid to the end, but it could have been so much more.
The opening section of Icke's Oresteia is one of the best to any play I've ever read. It's an adaptation of the oft-forgotten Iphigenia in Aulis, where war general Agamemnon learns that he has to sacrifice his beloved eldest daughter in order to save thousands of Greek lives. In classic renderings, Iphigenia is a teenager who eventually bravely decides that her life must be sacrificed. In Icke's rendering, she is an adorable seven-year-old who trusts her parents implicitly. The flair and imagination with which Icke shifts the action from Ancient Greece to modern-day chic, glassy London is breathtaking. His Clytemnestra is a both terrifying and wonderful creation, a city mother who adores her husband and gradually sours into pure hatred when she learns that she can't protect her daughter. The characters are wonderfully complex. All this carries over beautifully into Agamemnon, the next part of the Greek series, where Clytemnestra awaits her husband return and plots...and plots...and plots...
Unfortunately, the next two parts of this quartet lose a lot of their power once Agamemnon is dead (spoiler alert?) and the action shifts much more decisively away from his and Clytemnestra's marriage to the lives of their children, Orestes and Electra. Largely because the structure of The Libation Bearers/Electra demands that Clytemnestra hovers around in the background as a monster, offending both grieving siblings, the heart of the previous two sections is lost and then fades out altogether with an almost offensively stupid twist - unless I missed something? (I should note that I've never seen this play, only read it, but I would love to.)
The twist in question is the revelation that . I am completely open to the idea that I missed something obvious in the play, but I found this an even stupider and blander take on this usual reductive twist. It doesn't help that I've read another version of this story which uses this twist, only the genders are reversed, which I found at least an improvement. At least Oresteia remains solid to the end, but it could have been so much more.
September 20, 2023
Wow. No words truly. This is truly such a fulfilling dialogue with the original myth and the tragedies that were written about it. I really enjoyed how much this play emphasized/made use of the cyclical aspect of this medium and the stories it tells. Also, the way the moral complexity of the characters and story was handled was so satisfying.
February 1, 2020
This play is 128 pages, and while I don't know how long this would take to perform, the play itself feels like extreme concentrate. Like, bottoms up, drinking lemon juice straight, no water. Every line counts. There are no throwaway moments, and if you are (very likely) familiar with Aeschylus' original Oresteia, there isn't a single relaxed moment. Everything matters because you know what will happen next. You just don't know how the characters will get there.
That's the best part, really: the process through which a father (Agamemnon) comes to decide that killing his own daughter (Iphigenia) for a religious ceremony is somehow the right course of action. The characters argue in good faith the whole time. Icke did a wonderful job modernizing the play so that it hangs in an age halfway between Ancient Greek and a nondescript Orwellian present (/ the present). Agamemnon isn't portrayed as a religious manic, he's given multiple confirmations of the message to kill his daughter. And in spite of that, he tries very hard to twist the meaning of the message. He doesn't want to believe it, as any parent wouldn't, and yet we somehow go from total denial to the very, very fragile rationalization that Iphigenia would be better off dead. Agamemnon's brother Menelaus is the main debate opponent for this part of the story, so a bit of a shame that we didn't get any hesitation from his end where we saw plenty from Agamemnon.
I don't know if I enjoyed Icke's take on Clytemnestra, who is a fairly difficult character to pin down. Her affair with Aegisthus comes out of nowhere here, I wish there'd been more about that because most versions of this story (including the originals) just gloss over how the heck he got into this story and why she's attracted to him.
What does work very well is Clytemnestra's cunning ability to control appearances. She shows how much she values presentation a bit at the beginning. (Icke throws in a fascinating line where Clytemnestra, aware that some kind of incident with a child may be required, merely advises her husband to make sure nothing becomes too public because it would be a PR nightmare. HUGE understatement but I was struck by the cold-bloodedness of the statement.) Later there's an interview segment where Clytemnestra just performs SO WELL and you see the full extent of her manipulative skills. It's a shame we don't get to see more of her interactions with her children the way we do with Agamemnon. I feel like that might have rounded things out a bit, but maybe that's not what would scratch the itch.
My last point relates to what may be a sore point for other Oresteia enthusiasts: the mystery of Electra. Seriously, what the heck happens to her at the end?? The play deals with this issue in a very creative way that I won't spoil (outside the spoiler section). At the trial, everyone's clinging to procedure and their version of the story, and no one knows what really was the "right thing." The tone is comedic, desperate, and moving all at once.
All these rambles to say: I remember why I don't like to read theatre much. It's because when you read a play that you love, you immediately wish you could see it on stage or on video. And there just isn't any recording available for Icke's version. It's unclear if someone will put on a new production as of yet, but if it ever happens, I'm moving mountains to go. This is just compelling stuff from beginning to end, and I'm looking forward to reading more of Icke's adaptations.
That's the best part, really: the process through which a father (Agamemnon) comes to decide that killing his own daughter (Iphigenia) for a religious ceremony is somehow the right course of action. The characters argue in good faith the whole time. Icke did a wonderful job modernizing the play so that it hangs in an age halfway between Ancient Greek and a nondescript Orwellian present (/ the present). Agamemnon isn't portrayed as a religious manic, he's given multiple confirmations of the message to kill his daughter. And in spite of that, he tries very hard to twist the meaning of the message. He doesn't want to believe it, as any parent wouldn't, and yet we somehow go from total denial to the very, very fragile rationalization that Iphigenia would be better off dead. Agamemnon's brother Menelaus is the main debate opponent for this part of the story, so a bit of a shame that we didn't get any hesitation from his end where we saw plenty from Agamemnon.
I don't know if I enjoyed Icke's take on Clytemnestra, who is a fairly difficult character to pin down. Her affair with Aegisthus comes out of nowhere here, I wish there'd been more about that because most versions of this story (including the originals) just gloss over how the heck he got into this story and why she's attracted to him.
What does work very well is Clytemnestra's cunning ability to control appearances. She shows how much she values presentation a bit at the beginning. (Icke throws in a fascinating line where Clytemnestra, aware that some kind of incident with a child may be required, merely advises her husband to make sure nothing becomes too public because it would be a PR nightmare. HUGE understatement but I was struck by the cold-bloodedness of the statement.) Later there's an interview segment where Clytemnestra just performs SO WELL and you see the full extent of her manipulative skills. It's a shame we don't get to see more of her interactions with her children the way we do with Agamemnon. I feel like that might have rounded things out a bit, but maybe that's not what would scratch the itch.
My last point relates to what may be a sore point for other Oresteia enthusiasts: the mystery of Electra. Seriously, what the heck happens to her at the end?? The play deals with this issue in a very creative way that I won't spoil (outside the spoiler section). At the trial, everyone's clinging to procedure and their version of the story, and no one knows what really was the "right thing." The tone is comedic, desperate, and moving all at once.
All these rambles to say: I remember why I don't like to read theatre much. It's because when you read a play that you love, you immediately wish you could see it on stage or on video. And there just isn't any recording available for Icke's version. It's unclear if someone will put on a new production as of yet, but if it ever happens, I'm moving mountains to go. This is just compelling stuff from beginning to end, and I'm looking forward to reading more of Icke's adaptations.
July 28, 2025
I wasn't really looking forward to reading yet another version of the Oresteia but then I was pleasantly surprised by Icke's adaptation which is bold and deep and represents a great step in synthesizing Aeschylus with the reception of the story of the Oresteia into something new.
The play itself is self aware of the nature of myth as story and the way in which these stories are fluid because of the retellings. This theme runs deep in the work since much of the play is like a version of Equus with Orestes trying to reconstruct the story from memory and feeling in an interview with a "Doctor" which then makes for a seamless framework where the courtroom drama of the last act has been with us all along.
The play is structured in 4 acts (they get shorter as we go along) with a death in each of the first three acts. The family drama of having Iphigeneia as a living character lends a particular poignancy to the first act and also to the subsequent actions in the play. (Character doubling is also very well employed to add layers of meaning to the text.)
The most interesting thing here is the erasure of Electra as the author turns the whole character of Electra into a figment of Orestes' imagination. (Which makes a large chunk of the first act also a subject of unreliable narration.). Like I said, bold.
I find myself actually fascinated by the implications of this adaptation and the way it messes with the source material.
Less successful for me is the way the war in the background is updated and adapted. The language of the expedition is very much on the nose for contemporary war but something is lost in this process and that is the genuinely trifling aspect of the causes of the war versus the way in which the war is "sold" in the language of the characters in the very way in which wars are sold to us in the presence. What I mean by this is that pretending like the Trojans in any way represent an existential threat to the Greeks and are preparing to attack them if they don't get the wind at their backs and attack first is definitely reminiscent of how we do war today and how we sell it to our society but I think the loss here is the obviousness of the venality of the original war.
But maybe Aeschylus would have been more approving of couching the war in a way that connected it with the kind of existential threat that came from the Persians of his time than the later generation of Euripides would have been.
At any rate, I think this is one that I'd like to discuss with more people so you should read it.
The play itself is self aware of the nature of myth as story and the way in which these stories are fluid because of the retellings. This theme runs deep in the work since much of the play is like a version of Equus with Orestes trying to reconstruct the story from memory and feeling in an interview with a "Doctor" which then makes for a seamless framework where the courtroom drama of the last act has been with us all along.
The play is structured in 4 acts (they get shorter as we go along) with a death in each of the first three acts. The family drama of having Iphigeneia as a living character lends a particular poignancy to the first act and also to the subsequent actions in the play. (Character doubling is also very well employed to add layers of meaning to the text.)
The most interesting thing here is the erasure of Electra as the author turns the whole character of Electra into a figment of Orestes' imagination. (Which makes a large chunk of the first act also a subject of unreliable narration.). Like I said, bold.
I find myself actually fascinated by the implications of this adaptation and the way it messes with the source material.
Less successful for me is the way the war in the background is updated and adapted. The language of the expedition is very much on the nose for contemporary war but something is lost in this process and that is the genuinely trifling aspect of the causes of the war versus the way in which the war is "sold" in the language of the characters in the very way in which wars are sold to us in the presence. What I mean by this is that pretending like the Trojans in any way represent an existential threat to the Greeks and are preparing to attack them if they don't get the wind at their backs and attack first is definitely reminiscent of how we do war today and how we sell it to our society but I think the loss here is the obviousness of the venality of the original war.
But maybe Aeschylus would have been more approving of couching the war in a way that connected it with the kind of existential threat that came from the Persians of his time than the later generation of Euripides would have been.
At any rate, I think this is one that I'd like to discuss with more people so you should read it.
March 25, 2023
I saw this play at the Park Avenue Armory in the summer of June 2022 after reading Aeschylus’ version and thought the performance was quite exceptional: key pivotal moments in the play, the innovative blocking, and the retelling of the Ancient Greek trilogy in modern terms. There were some issues I took away — the handling of Cassandra, the lack of agency that Aegisthus has and the Lynch-ian twist around Electra. But I walked away satisfied in this new and bold interpretation.
The other day I was thinking about the most epic moment of the play — the part where the winds blow literally everything across the stage: papers flying, the characters’ hair whipping furiously, all the props going which every way — and thought it was worth a reread. I am so glad I did: there are such powerful speeches that are given that I had forgotten about, particularly by Klytemnestra, about grief, revenge, pain, and family. And reading the passage about the winds for sure brought goosebumps back as I remembered the experience:
“But the last bit of this is it drowned out by the sound of the wind, real wind. Doors and windows rattle and fly open and the still, heavy heat is ruptured by cold wind flooding like a tide through the theatre.
KLYTEMNESTRA steps forward in front of this, she’s heard the wind, realizing something. In a moment, she will scream.
IPHIGENIA’S body is carried away.
The wind rages now. Paper, fabric, lamps go flying, anything not fixed down, blows all over the set. KLYTEMNESTRA stands in full blast of it.”
So much in this stage direction is absolutely electrifying, tantalizing. Another example, that makes me reconsider my first opinion about Cassandra:
“ELECTRA: Can you actually speak?
Then: CASSANDRA suddenly speaks in Ancient Greek from the original Aeschylus — passionate, furious, tearful. It’s terrifying to listen to.”
There’s a quote by Cambridge professor Simon Goldhill in the introduction that says “All translators are traitors, but some traitors turn out to be liberators who let us recalibrate what matters, and see the world from a startlingly new perspective”. Icke’s adaptation and script here came blowing back, refining and reviving my experience a year ago. I will be avidly looking for this performance to watch again in the future, wherever it may pop up — and I know this script will be a common reread in the future.
The other day I was thinking about the most epic moment of the play — the part where the winds blow literally everything across the stage: papers flying, the characters’ hair whipping furiously, all the props going which every way — and thought it was worth a reread. I am so glad I did: there are such powerful speeches that are given that I had forgotten about, particularly by Klytemnestra, about grief, revenge, pain, and family. And reading the passage about the winds for sure brought goosebumps back as I remembered the experience:
“But the last bit of this is it drowned out by the sound of the wind, real wind. Doors and windows rattle and fly open and the still, heavy heat is ruptured by cold wind flooding like a tide through the theatre.
KLYTEMNESTRA steps forward in front of this, she’s heard the wind, realizing something. In a moment, she will scream.
IPHIGENIA’S body is carried away.
The wind rages now. Paper, fabric, lamps go flying, anything not fixed down, blows all over the set. KLYTEMNESTRA stands in full blast of it.”
So much in this stage direction is absolutely electrifying, tantalizing. Another example, that makes me reconsider my first opinion about Cassandra:
“ELECTRA: Can you actually speak?
Then: CASSANDRA suddenly speaks in Ancient Greek from the original Aeschylus — passionate, furious, tearful. It’s terrifying to listen to.”
There’s a quote by Cambridge professor Simon Goldhill in the introduction that says “All translators are traitors, but some traitors turn out to be liberators who let us recalibrate what matters, and see the world from a startlingly new perspective”. Icke’s adaptation and script here came blowing back, refining and reviving my experience a year ago. I will be avidly looking for this performance to watch again in the future, wherever it may pop up — and I know this script will be a common reread in the future.
December 29, 2025
icke's adaptation of oresteia reads like an ice-bath--i was transfixed for two hours straight by the consistently devastating dialogue (act three is especially dense with impact), the aggressive modernization of myth, and the intermingling/desecration of genre.
there are many things i loved--icke's nuanced depiction of agamemnon's choice, the substitution of the rowdy greek pantheon with a remote christian god, electra's furious grief--and above all, the novel, vaguely lynchian twist at the end of act three.
where the play falls apart is its excessive ambition. icke attempts to juggle a family tragedy, a psychological study, and a boldly philosophical courtroom drama in four acts--a demanding task for any adaptation. after all, aeschylus needed three full-length plays to tell the story in its original format. the only novel i can think of that attempts something of the same scale is the brothers karamazov, which exceeds 600 pages. icke's blind spots become most apparent in the final act, a pastiche of aeschylus' libation bearers, which is largely seen as a justification of the patriarchal order. icke attempts to invert aeschylus' patriarchal narrative by parodying the absurdity of athene's judgement. however, in attempting to converge every plot point, the fourth act becomes rushed and confusing, leaving its commentary to barely register beyond a cursory nod to jury bias.
i think there is absolutely potential here, especially with the aforementioned plot twist:
the play ends on a wholly unresolved note, which is partially the point: orestes does not know where to put his guilt and grief after he is acquitted. he is absolved in the eyes of the law but not by himself. i would have loved to see an adaptation of orestes or the eumenides grappling with these themes, but for what this play claims to be--an inventive, modern-day take on the oresteia--icke over-delivers.
there are many things i loved--icke's nuanced depiction of agamemnon's choice, the substitution of the rowdy greek pantheon with a remote christian god, electra's furious grief--and above all, the novel, vaguely lynchian twist at the end of act three.
where the play falls apart is its excessive ambition. icke attempts to juggle a family tragedy, a psychological study, and a boldly philosophical courtroom drama in four acts--a demanding task for any adaptation. after all, aeschylus needed three full-length plays to tell the story in its original format. the only novel i can think of that attempts something of the same scale is the brothers karamazov, which exceeds 600 pages. icke's blind spots become most apparent in the final act, a pastiche of aeschylus' libation bearers, which is largely seen as a justification of the patriarchal order. icke attempts to invert aeschylus' patriarchal narrative by parodying the absurdity of athene's judgement. however, in attempting to converge every plot point, the fourth act becomes rushed and confusing, leaving its commentary to barely register beyond a cursory nod to jury bias.
i think there is absolutely potential here, especially with the aforementioned plot twist:
the play ends on a wholly unresolved note, which is partially the point: orestes does not know where to put his guilt and grief after he is acquitted. he is absolved in the eyes of the law but not by himself. i would have loved to see an adaptation of orestes or the eumenides grappling with these themes, but for what this play claims to be--an inventive, modern-day take on the oresteia--icke over-delivers.
May 11, 2025
What does Robert Icke's text offer us as the surviving artefact of his famous production? I suppose a clarity of vision and structure. By abandoning the texts of Euripides and Aeschylus and offering us a version of the narrative in modern speech he provides a far more satisfying dramatic experience than say John Barton's The Greeks did a generation before. He has an obvious gift for dialogue. But the framework is oppressive and on the page at least anti-dramatic at times. Orestes' interminable dialogue with a psychiatrist who then turns into a sort of inquisitor as we reach the Eumenides portion of the story is very heavy handed and the rest of the courtroom gimmickry doesn't quite work. I also think some of the suggested doubling - done for dramatic not budgetary reasons - is a pretty crude way to make a point: Agamemnon/Aegisthus particularly. Fascinating if flawed then and I am so grateful to have a published text. Simon Goldhill's Introduction is interesting if oddly incongruous.
October 30, 2025
I think it's rare for an adaptation to be pulled off even decently but this was beyond words. It felt like looking into a light so bright, so distinct that it blinds you; everything felt so intentional, so calculated, and pretty much everything paid off ten fold. The death of Iphigenia especially was so spectacular I don't know when I'll stop thinking about it.
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May 9, 2022This is a play by Robert Icke, based on Aeschylus. I read it aloud with a family member. It struck me as very good, but I didn’t have the same time to consider it as if I’d been reading it to myself, so I won’t give it a rating or review it more fully.
January 21, 2018
Super interesting play with very compelling characters. Super interesting structure. Deals with spiritual and family dynamics that really strain the characters!
May 1, 2019
Amazing. The dinner table scene in Act 1 is one of the most brilliantly written scenes I've read.
July 11, 2020
This is a production that really loves Clytemnestra and for that.... I love it. Points taken off for Electra though, sorry!
June 2, 2022
brilliant. shaking remembering Lia Williams' performance as Klytemnestra.
July 26, 2022
FINALLY i found this
August 10, 2022
yeah, this fucks hard.
January 17, 2023
She's been dead since the beginning.
God, for a story that I've performed and read multiple times this was truly one of the best. If only I was able to see it performed! Absolutely fantastic.
God, for a story that I've performed and read multiple times this was truly one of the best. If only I was able to see it performed! Absolutely fantastic.
May 3, 2024
this was always going to happen
she’s been dead since the beginning
she’s been dead since the beginning
August 8, 2024
'This was always going to happen. She's been dead since the beginning.' !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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