Playwright: Ted Hughes after Aeschylus
Greasy Joan & Co. at Storefront Theate
Phone: ( 312 ) 742-8497; $10-$15
Through April 23
BY SCOTT C. MORGAN
The Desperate Housewives of suburban Wisteria Lane have nothing on the diabolical housewife Clytemnestra of the ancient Greek House of Atrius. How else to explain why The Oresteia, one of western civilization's oldest soap operas ( er, heroic tragedies ) , still commands our rapt and gossip-hungry attention today?
It certainly helps when you have Charlaette Speigner's brilliant Clytemnestra in Greasy Joan & Company's stark and smart modern-dress production. Ted Hughes' slimmed-down 1999 translation ( in its Chicago premiere ) of Aeschylus‚ 458 B.C. trilogy of Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers and The Eumenides is also a plus.
Speigner makes it loads of naughty fun to revel in Clytemnestra's seething hatred of her swaggering war hero husband Agamemnon. He did, after all, sacrifice their daughter, Iphigenia, just to get a favorable wind from the gods to fight the Trojan War. Now that he's back, we get to watch the adulterous Clytemnestra exact her bloody revenge.
Watching Speigner silently stabbing the back of Ronald Conner's boastful Agamemnon with such a vengeful glare gives you tingles of frightened anticipation. Speigner exudes queenly regality coupled with a powerful African-American 'don't you dare mess with me' attitude that makes it so you dare not take your eyes off her stylishly dressed Clytemnestra.
The rest of the six-member company aren't acting slouches either, but Speigner pretty much walks away with the show thanks to the role's operatic anger. ( Speigner also makes a equivocal and elegant goddess Athena in a courtroom trial that concludes the trilogy. )
Conner's assumption of Agamemnon and the god Apollo are both full of confidence, though I wish he could have shown more of Agamemnon's moralistic doubt in the chorus' prologue when he decides to kill his own daughter for the prospect of war glory. Corey Riger brings a nice mix of brooding and man-of-action as Orestes, the son who avenges his father by murdering his mother and her offstage lover.
Sarah Ball, Ravi Batista and Kristina Klemetti all get to shine as the gossipy chorus of onlookers, unbending furies and other peripheral characters who predict both gloom and doom.
Other than a portentous prologue that is sometimes pretentious and confusing ( since each actor doubles with the chorus' exposition ) , director Julieanne Ehre's Oresteia is filled with smart touches that comment on our current messy war involvement.
Although the soldier herald announcing Agamemno's return is all cheers, Ehre makes him war-wounded and wheelchair bound. Also Clytemnestra's microphone delivery at the suffering the Trojans have faced sounds eerily up-to-date.
Yet commenting on current political situations through drama is nothing new since the Greeks did it all the time. Greasy Joan & Company's involving Oresteia continues that tradition and proves that some of our best soap operas also happen to be the oldest.
