Simon Stone's production of The Oresteia at the Bridge Theatre in London is a modern reimagining that blends Aeschylus with elements from other Greek tragedies, resulting in a gripping but occasionally exasperating epic. Starring Mary-Louise Parker and David Morrissey, the play runs until 19 September.
Modern Setting and Chronological Shifts
The story transposes the ancient cycle of violence into contemporary metropolitan family life. Christopher (David Morrissey) runs a tech company, his wife Montie (Mary-Louise Parker) is an American alpha-type, and their children include Augie (Tom Glynn-Carney), offstage Isabel, and her twin Alice (Rosie Sheehy). Their privilege is evident in their casual use of Bollinger as cooking wine and their home resembling an upmarket hotel chain.
Stone cuts up Aeschylus's chronology, with killings reported before they are dramatised. The narrative shuttles back and forth in time, from pre-Brexit Britain to pandemic days and the present. This reverse storytelling sustains tension but lacks the inexorability of classical tragedy, partly because characters are not deeply known.
Influences from Other Greek Tragedies
Elements of Antigone appear in Isabel, who is less a sacrificial innocent and more a political upstart opposing her father's company, implicated in selling military equipment to countries including Russia. The play also nods to Medea and possibly Oedipus Rex. The most flamboyant departure is the reordering of events, with a detective following the avenging Augie.
Performances and Characterisation
Mary-Louise Parker delivers a powerhouse performance as Montie, though her motivations remain unclear—she kills on principle, whim, or anger at different moments. The murder of Christopher occurs while she and her lover Jerome (John Macmillan) are drunk, undercutting her clear-eyed anger. David Morrissey plays Christopher with convincingly lugubriousness, making him a strangely sympathetic character resigned to guilt.
Other characters are entertaining but thin: Alice is indulgently self-flagellating, amusingly portrayed by Sheehy, while Augie's transformation into a war veteran and dead-eyed killer feels generic. The absence of gods is replaced by Christopher's persuasive brother Melville (Lloyd Hutchinson), and Christopher is given more of a get-out, as he has not outrightly killed his daughter.
Design and Direction
Lizzie Clachan's dazzling set features a revolving home with exposed rooms, effectively using Stone's hallmark glass-box. The social satire is on point, verging on sending up the ridiculously entitled family, with jittering humour alongside tragedy. By the third act, the play resembles a police procedural, with characters trapped in their perpetually revolving lives.
The play expands the family's cycle of violence into Britain's own, referencing an Anglo-Saxon representing historic invasions and contemporary wars such as Afghanistan, Ukraine, Syria, and Chechnya. However, there is a puzzling omission of the current conflict in the Middle East.
Overall Impression
The production is draining, invigorating, frustrating, original, and ersatz, with too much thrown at it: Aeschylus and then some. It offers great cross-references for Greek theatre buffs but feels like story upon story, building to a strange thoughtlessness. At the Bridge Theatre, London, until 19 September.
