A Trojan Woman – King’s Head Theatre, London

Writer: Sara Farrington

Director: Meghan Finn

Aeschylus introduced a second actor into Greek Tragedy. Sophocles brought in a third actor; Euripides used as many actors as he needed. Sara Farrington cuts tragedy back to its bones and populates the stage with dozens of characters, all played by just one, a single performer, Drita Kabashi, and it’s really all she needs.

Kabashi starts the play as a refugee mother in a recognisably contemporary conflict zone. It could be Bosnia, it could be Libya, it could be Ukraine, wherever desperate people flee military coercion. She repeats, ‘They don’t kill civilians’ over and over, as she looks for a safe place with her child, but there are no safe places, they do kill civilians, and an explosion sends her back to the ruins of Troy, to a clutch of desperate women looking at a future of slavery and abuse and the murder of their families. And Kabashi is all of them. Euripides’ Trojan Women has never been so minimal.

It is a tour de force performance, from an imperious but diminished Hecuba to a randy Menelaus being swayed by a seductive Helen or a brace of gods with no consideration for their worshippers but a huge amount of regard for their own proper rites of worship. Kabashi is funny and desperate by turns, the speed of transition is stunning, and she wields a selection of well-chosen but simple figurative props to indicate the characters she inhabits with aplomb. Hector, for instance, is represented by a big shiny shield that spends most of its time on stage on top of a dustbin.

Sara Farrington has devised a taut, relevant version of the Euripides play. Meghan Finn directs with assurance and taste, making the play fly by in a brief hour but landing point after point as Euripides’ ancient play resonates in the modern world. The simple set becomes whatever it needs to be with no fuss. And Drita Kabashi is mesmerising, shapeshifting, mood-surfing, wonderful. Greek Tragedy that speaks to then and to now with force.

Runs until 9 December 2024