Word: aspassia
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Electro (by Sophocles) has one of those scenes of naked emotional intensity that have been missing on the stage since Olivier gave his howl of self-recognition as Oedipus. It comes when Electra, played by Aspassia Papathanassiou, sees the urn that supposedly contains the ashes of her brother Orestes. She drops where she stands with a wild animal cry; she clutches at the urn, cradles and rocks it in entwining arms, spasmodically tries to breathe it back to life with words of love, smothers it with the salty, sightless kisses of tears, the strangulated sobs of a soul bereft...
...well as dissension; the troubles of the House of Atreus belong to the universal family of man. Before the muted grey stylized panels, columns and stairs of the palace facade, the drama of man's willful pride goes on unmuted. But the play's hypnotic center is Aspassia Papathanassiou as she seethes with mother hate and sways before high winds of woe. As primordially pagan as a bolt of lightning hurled from the hand of Zeus, her Electra consumes the stage with quenchless fire. To see it is to see a classic become a conflagration...
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