The Stage

Hecuba

Published Monday 18 April 2005 at 15:20 by Susan Elkin

Hecuba is a timeless piece, 24 centuries old, about parents and children. Tony Harrison’s new version stresses that it is also a feminist play as we watch Vanessa Redgrave as Hecuba, once Queen of Troy, now “a childless old slave on the ground”, using every means at her disposal to save her children.

Redgrave’s voice is ragged with age and grief. When eventually she takes vengeance by killing Polymestor’s little boys and blinding their father, her long-sustained, quiet, serene smile of satisfaction is one of the most chilling things in the play. Has she been driven out of her mind that she can pervert her femininity by killing in cold blood the infants that woman is programmed to produce and nuture? Redgrave leaves you wondering. It is a fine performance.

The twelve-woman chorus is effective too. They half sing, often in open harmony to music by Mick Sands, and the articulation has crystalline clarity. Notes shift against verbal rhythms like psalm singing. June Paris, chorus member and Hecuba’s servant, has great gravitas and a splendid voice and Lydia Leonard, vulnerable and pretty but strong and dignified, moves the audience as Hecuba’s condemned daughter, Polyxena.

Less successful are the men in this production. Malcolm Tierney’s Agamemnon is wooden and Alan Dobie’s Talythibuis flat. Darrell D’Silva, inclined to over act, is unconvincing as both Odysseus and as the arrogant Polymestor.

Es Devlin’s designs for set and costumes are thoughtful. The use of two revolving semi-circular walls creates the right shape of space for each part of the action and her flowing faded mauve and aquamarine robes for most of the women hit the right note.