Newsnight Review discussed Edna O'Brien's new version of Iphigenia by Euripides

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(Edited highlights of the panel's review)

MARK LAWSON:
It's a powerful plot this. Agamemnon is one of the few parents that makes Michael Jackson look kind of okay at the job.

But does it come across powerfully?

ALLISON PEARSON:
Lisa Dillon, who plays Iphigenia, what a great star she will be. She brings fantastic poignancy.

I found the rest of it tremendously under-powered.

We saw Clytemnestra and Agamemnon there. We are supposed to believe this man is this fiercesome king. He and Clytemnestra have murdered her first husband. They have murdered her baby. They are supposed to be iconic figures. I found them woefully under-powered. You didn't think they would have an aggressive game of scrabble.

I kept wishing we had someone like Dennis Quilley and Judi Dench for those roles. It's lost a great deal.

What Edna O'Brien has done is gone for the psychological angle, the modern angle. A lot of the complexity has been lost. She has lost the chorus, which is a great relief. A lot of the power had fallen away.

LAWSON:
There is a problem with Greek tragedy that their plot and level of incident has gone into soap operas and Footballers' Wives.

We don't believe the stuff about the gods anymore in this culture, so it is quite hard to do. Have they found a way of doing it?

ROSIE BOYCOTT:
I think they have more or less.

I go along with what you are saying about the main couple. These were the forerunners of Macbeth and his wife. They should have had a similar strength and terror. I thought that they were very soft around the edges and kind of, you know, you didn't believe this bloke was the King. You didn't believe he had done these things before.

I found myself enjoying it despite myself. It's a great story. It makes you think, I hope people will bring more Greek tragedies back. It's nice to know about them. Parts are very good. It's good that there was no chorus.

It's a short type play. You get caught up, even if you know the ending, you are very, dramatically you don't want her to die, because you love her.

I thought that the whole continuity of the blood, when she first gets her period right through to the blood falling on Clytemnestra at the end, that was powerful.

Had those two main roles, particularly, Agamemnon, been tougher and stronger, it would have been a really good play. You would have really been very excited all the way through it.

LAWSON:
There were a lot of young people at the play. They started giggling for ten minutes, then they were held by it. That was to the credit of Edna O'Brien. It is a clean, clear text.

TOM PAULIN:
She has taken a play which has never been performed and given it a Jacob and Isaac ending, and made it into a powerful anti- war play.

It was great being back in the Crucible, to watch it with an audience in a society poised on the brink of war. It was powerful and it got a good reception and it makes a point against what is lost in war.

You have to sacrifice the truth, you have to control the press, all sorts of things we can read into the sacrifice of Iphigenia.

Also, one has to remember that Edna O'Brien comes out of a culture which is soaked in the idea of blood and martyrdom and is revising that against itself. I thought it was very powerful.

In one moment, Agamemnon says, "Gone is every hope I had of sweetness". You think, that is a perfect line of verse. I wanted more stark lines like that.

PEARSON:
In the original, Agamemnon is revealed as a hypocrite, he would rather go to war at the end of the day and save his position than save his daughter.

Achilles is seen as vain and self obsessed, he turns his back on Iphigenia. The mother, Clytemnestra, is seen as a nightmare and says in the play "why not get someone else's teenage daughter to have their throat cut?"

Everyone is plotting for power, in it for themselves. That is completely lost.

BOYCOTT:
The greater subtlety of the play has been blasted through, especially at the beginning, which is quite handy if you have forgotten your Greek tragedy, because she gives you a commentary on Helen of Troy.

PAULIN:
She revises it in a way where you think the version on could run. We could say Antigone or one of the Oedipus plays.

LAWSON:
There are short lines, where they say "we have the cups for the blood". Tom mentioned we may be on the brink of war, but I thought that was over-stressed.

BOYCOTT:
I think you are reading something into this that was not there.

PAULIN:
I think it was.

BOYCOTT:
People go to war for strange reasons.

PAULIN:
She was thinking about where she was when she wrote it.

LAWSON:
The play continues at the Crucible Theatre.