Electra

Triple-threat Menekseoglu’s reimaginings of Greek tragedy have garnered a good deal of critical acclaim, and overall we’re inclined to believe the hype. The overarching ideas tying this installment of his Oresteia to the rest—a bold recasting of the chorus, a kind of anti-promenade immersion of the audience—are good, as are some of the new twists applied to the synthesis of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. But Menekseoglu and company seem to have shot a relative dud with their take on Electra.

The crucial chapter in the endgame of the curse of the house of Atreus, Electra presents its titular heroine (and brother hero, Orestes) with an impossible dilemma: Avenging your father (Agamemnon) is one thing, but what if the murderer (Clytemnestra) is your mother? (Even if she had a good reason, like Dad human-sacrificing her daughter to christen the Trojan War.) The tale, among other things, is the ur-source of Hamlet, one of several factors that makes reducing Orestes to a Manchurian-candidate assassin a painfully unfruitful choice. Similarly, the rough, unlikable anger of this Electra (Weiler) seems an unnecessarily harsh reduction. There is, however, a strange magic to the show, due largely to the chorus, whose members deftly ride the line between addled and eerie; Weiler’s unflinching performance; and excellent, literally thankless supporting comic work from Gaines as Electra’s disregarded husband, Pamphilos (frankly the best thing in the show).

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