Word: atreus
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...cycle often plays derived from Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides (seven of the ten) and a dramatization by John Barton of a segment of Homer. The cycle is presented as a trilogy: "The War," "The Murders" and "The Gods." Its purpose: to show the turbulent destiny of the doomed House of Atreus in chronological order. Barton, master builder of this endeavor, likes to work on the grand scale. In previous years he was celebrated for The Wars of the Roses, a panorama adapted from Shakespeare's dramas. Here he presents the antecedents, history and consequences of the Trojan War. His actors...
...happiest of men, or so he thinks. The chorus of crones, clad in ominous black, knows better: Clytemnestra has taken a lover, Aegis thus (Peter Woodward), who now rules the land as a tyrant. He is intimately linked to the origin of the curse on the House of Atreus. All too soon the cries of horror sound as if from some echo chamber in hell. The fates are inexorable: the bodies of Agamemnon and Cassandra are eventually hurled onto the stage like the carcasses of animals, and Clytemnestra emerges spattered with blood. As she drapes Cassandra's arm over...