Word: troyes
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...waylays the messenger and rails at Agamemnon for his vacillating disloyalty to Greece. Achilles (Mike Gwilym) warns that the troops are restive and mutinous after the long delay. Affected by his brother's torment, Menelaus suddenly shifts his adamant position and suggests giving up the entire expedition to Troy. But the fates have decreed otherwise; Iphigenia (Judy Buxton) and Clytemnestra (Janet Suzman) have arrived...
When the wily Odysseus (Church), he whom Homer called "the man of many devices," thinks up the ruse of the Trojan horse, Troy falls. In Trojan Women by Euripides, the women are to be parceled out among the victors. Queen Hecuba (Eliza Ward) leads the women in a keening catalogue of I woe: she has lost her husband Priam, her son Hector, and will eventually lose all of her children...
...Hecuba plays the blame game, Helen, "the whore of Troy," is responsible for everything. Helen (Suzman) appears, as haughty as an international star. She seems to regard the Trojan War as her biggest hit ever. Menelaus is ready to butcher her for adultery, but he is so afraid of Helen's siren sway that he does not look at her. Silkily, she makes her excuse. She was in the power of Aphrodite-her will was not her own. Menelaus' meat-cleaver hand drops, Helen sashays away, whistling in sultry triumph...
...true pitch point of Trojan Women involves Hector's widow, Andromache (Billie Whitelaw) and her toddler son. Odysseus has convinced the Greeks that if the child grows to manhood, he may lead Troy in another war against the Greeks. He must be torn from his mother's skirts and dashed to death from the city's topless towers. One of the most wrenching scenes in all of Greek tragedy is shatteringly performed by Whitelaw when her little boy is taken and returned as a tiny corpse in the shell of Hector's shield...
This is the gory part of the epic: blood lust and revenge couched in the name of justice. Polymestor (Oliver Ford Davies) is an erstwhile friend of Troy to whom King Priam and Queen Hecuba sent their youngest son, Polydorus, for safekeeping-along with a stock of gold. But in Greek tragedy, today's friend is tomorrow's fiend...