Caitlin Stasey and Hayden Ezzy in A Kind of Electra, The Clown School Company. Photo supplied.
A Kind of Electra (Stage 4, MacEwan Fine Arts Walterdale Theatre)
By Liz Nicholls, .ca
When we meet the title character (Caitlin Stasey) in this lacerating three-actor account of the Greek myth of Electra, she is a shocking sight, shrieking in psychotic rage, almost levitating. Her limbs barely belong to her. “Every feeling I have turns to rage.”
To help support .ca YEG theatre coverage, click here.
The appetite for vengeance that drives the story from Greek mythology gets both a contemporary language, and unfailingly inventive physicality in the stage adaptation created and directed by David Bridel of L.A.’s Clown School Company.
To say that Electra’s family is dysfunctional laughably sells the House of Atreus short (that Danish kid Hamlet was a real whiner). Just for starters Electra’s dad, Agamemnon, who’s slit the throat of his eldest daughter Iphigenia as a sacrifice to the gods, has been killed by his wife Clytemnestra and her latest lover, who’s now the king. Anyhow, Electra, who’s been flung into exile and married off to a clown, knows everything about how to seethe, in Stasey’s downright scary performance. She hectors the gods for vengeance, talks to her dead father about vengeance, waits for her bro Orestes (Hayden Ezzy), to get back from his own exile and get started on vengeance. And would that smiley party girl upstage be the the sacrificial Iphigenia (Tiffany Elle)?
Even Orestes, as Ezzy conveys in an engaging performance, is a bit taken aback by the single-mindedness of his wild-eyed sister. And he shows a little caution, if not reluctance, to launch the big retribution campaign. The family dynamic is so lively, and plausibly set forth, with flashbacks to childhood. And the language has an unforced contemporary idiom to it: “there’s crazy in his eyes.” Is Helen (of Troy) a whore? “No, she’s misguided.” And the language is supplemented by a whole physical lexicon of eloquent arm and hand movement.
There’s suspense, jazz, and and disguises, plans hatched and unhatched, rehearsed and revised. This is an imaginative and exciting show. And the pay-off will knock your sandals off.
