Writer: Ava Pickett
Director: Lisa Spirling
Bloodsport: After Helen of Troy is full of people arguing and laying blame and plotting retribution, just like the folk in Agamemnon’s city, Mycenae. Blood debts from decades before have to be paid, murders met with murders, lies met with, well, murder. Murder is the answer to most problems, it turns out.
Two friends marry a pair of brothers. Cee (Laura Aikman) has settled into the life of an Essex Princess with her husband Mario (Gerard Monaco). Helen (Michelle Dockery) is married to Marcus (Jay Taylor), but she isn’t anything like as settled, and when the suave and charming Paris hits on her in their pub, she gets out, leaving her child and her husband to find a different, better future with a fancy foreigner. That’s the sort of liberty that Mario won’t allow, and he ignites a vicious anti-immigrant campaign to force Helen’s return.
That’s the set-up. The action takes place in Cee’s tasteful sitting room. Helen has come back with something other than reparation in mind, events spiral rapidly out of control, guerrillas fill the stage, and a climax approaches that doesn’t bode well for any of the participants.
Ava Pickett, fresh from the triumph of her debut play 1536, enjoys the mismatch of classical epic with Essex argot. She deliberately makes the world-moulding events of the Trojan War a nasty, spiteful domestic disturbance. Mario’s motives for pursuing his sister-in-law are far from pure, Helen’s drive for personal freedom is ambiguous, and beautifully brought into question by a searing cameo performance by Emma Monnickendam, as her abandoned daughter Hermione. It’s a small, self-contained appearance, but it encapsulates the questions the play throws about like shrapnel.
There are noteworthy performances from Joshua-Alexander Williams as an indignant representative of collateral damage, Ethan Moorhouse as a funny, foul-mouthed messenger, and especially Maimuna Memon as a sidekick with very little patience for the incessant chatter that everyone else seems to enjoy.
The play is verbally rich, full of ideas about current political debates, and deftly played by an outstanding cast, though Aikman, Dockery, and Memon own the lion’s (lionesses?) share of the stage time. As the cultural sphere fills up with retellings of Classical Greek stories, Ava Pickett has created something new, something compelling, something funny, that also speaks to political currents in which we are all presently swimming.
Runs until 10 October 2026
