Word: atreus
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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MINNESOTA THEATER COMPANY, Minneapolis, Minn. Shoemakers' Holiday, by Thomas Dekker, Anouilh's farce, Thieves' Carnival, and a new play, Harpers Ferry, by Barrie Stavis will be in repertory at the Tyrone Guthrie Theater until Oct. 27. The House of Atreus, adapted by John Lewin from Aeschylus' Oresteia, will be added to the playbill on July 21; Friedrich Duerrenmatt's The Visit debuts on Sept...
...length process. The son she has cowed into seemingly submissive piety sneaks out to bars, and surreptitiously plays his father's jazz recordings. A kind of Greek chorus of Harlem harpies gibber, clown, and rummage about as if they were witnessing the fall of a discount house of Atreus...
...against the gods, his growing commitment, and his redemption of the people. However, unless I sorely misunderstand the play, the surface clarity of structure disguises a number of deep philosophic muddles. Electra assures Orestes that by committing his murders, he is merely fulfilling the curse on the House of Atreus; Orestes, on the other hand, assures Zeus that by killing the tyrant he is fulfilling himself. Certainly he never for an instant feels the remorse which Electra's interpretation of his act would make necessary--but Electra does. The play's great weakness is its Second Act, in which Orestes...
...Electra with her mother and sister, modern playgoers will find hints of those vicious family fights that occupy whole scenes of Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller. The difference is that Sophocles' dialogue reveals destiny as 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...
...total silence. It was silence which screamed and screamed through the whole theater so that the audience lowered its head. And that scream inside the silence seemed to me to be the same as Cassandra's when she divines the reek of blood in the house of Atreus. It was the same wild cry with which the tragic imagination first marked our sense of life...