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The Review - THEATRE by HOWARD LOXTON
Published: 11 June 2009

Thyestes at the Arcola Theatre

Seneca’s bloodfest is a horror show classic

THYESTES
Arcola Theatre

NASTY lot the Atreides: from Tantalus, who chopped up his son and cooked him for the gods and gets dragged by a Fury from his watery hell to start this ancient play, to his grandson Atreus who cooks his brother’s children and feeds them to their dad, the titular Thyestes, and on to the next two generations who feature in Aeschylus’s better-known Oresteia.
Thyestes himself seized power by tricking his brother but playwright Seneca (translated with powerful lucidity by Caryl Churchill) makes him now penitent, moralising about only the poor being safe and kings drinking poison from gold cups.
Director Polly Findlay and designer Hannah Clark have set everything in a dim basement lined with racks of files, metal cabinets and tiny TV screens.
It could be a dictator’s bunker.
Is the single chair for an interrogator or the interrogated?
The lights flicker as though the gods are cutting off the electricity and some scenes are played with hand-held flashlights that rarely seem to hit the actors’ faces.
Doors bang and there are ominous sounds outside.
Any horror could come out of these shadows.
Actually, following the pattern of classical tragedy, the murders and mutilations all happen off-stage but what we do get is quite chilling enough.
Nick Fletcher, in military tunic, is a cold-blooded Atreus, pretending to offer peace but planning more cannibal cookery to wreak revenge on Jamie Ballard’s compliant Thyestes, who retches in uncontrolled horror when he discovers he has eaten his own children.
You may know what is going to happen to this cursed family but Findlay maintains the tension throughout this gripping 75 minutes with Michael Grady-Hall’s mop-wielding Chorus feeding us
with information
and her choice of modern-dress makes everything seem very immediate.
Messenger (Prasanna Puwanarajah) seems so shocked that he can only report things a few words at a time, which doesn’t help the sense.
But the overall atmosphere and powerful flow of the action show a cast perfectly in tune with each other.
Until June 27
020 7503 1646

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