Word: agamemnon
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Worth performed excerpts from plays such as Agamemnon, Promethius, Hamlet and Othello. She also commented on Greek literature, Shakespeare and her personal experiences in acting...
Preening for the camera in a white suit and Panama hat, an unctuous TV talk- show host named Agamemnon tries to prove his credentials as a Latin Lothario by reading letters from female viewers inviting him to "invade me, blockade me, dictate me." An amber-skinned transvestite named Manny the Fanny gyrates to a dance-club hit while recalling her Krazy Glue revenge on an unfaithful boyfriend. A punchy Peruvian ex-boxer, pressed to name a famous Hispanic, searches the blank canvas of his mind. "William Shakesperez," he intones. "He wrote Macho Do About Nothing and The Merchant of Venezuela...
...which vulgarity and clumsy colloquialism ("Is death the net result of all my love?") clash with the neoclassicism of the set and costumes. The plot is a sour inversion of the lovers' tangle in A Midsummer Night's Dream: Orestes (Kevin McNally), son of the murdered war hero Agamemnon, pursues his cousin Hermione (Penelope Wilton), daughter of Helen of Troy, who in turn loves Achilles' son Pyrrhus (Peter Eyre). But Pyrrhus, although betrothed to Hermione, has insulted his fellow Greeks by offering his heart and throne to Andromache (Janet Suzman), widow of the Trojan prince Hector, and by sparing...
...second half is an Antigone-like dispute among several new characters over whether to bury a lawbreaker's corpse (shown as a mummy with a bloody sword in its chest). Favoring burial is the swashbuckling Teukros (Gintaras Valiulis); against burial are the petulant and imperious Menelaos (Elliot Thomson) and Agamemnon (Joe Song). All it seems to boil down to, though, is a contest among the three to strike the grandest pose, shout the loudest, and sneer the most...
...also obeyed dramatic rules enforced through the millenia: the Ashman/Menken Little Shop was a carefully structured Greek tragedy, replete with chorus, hero, dilemma, tragic flaw, catastrophic misstep and ultimate retribution. Snappy Chiffons-type songs and bouffant hairdos notwithstanding, the resolution of Little Shop was closer to that of Agamemnon than Animal House...