Writer: Dipo Baruwa-Etti, after Euripides
Director: Roberta Zuric
The Trojan Women is presented by the Bill Cashmore Award, a scheme for young actors and writers based at the Lyric Hammersmith. Playwright Dipo Baruwa-Etti offers an ambitious piece, a loose reworking of Euripides’ play set in a sort of Orwellian dystopia and written in verse. It’s a strong idea, and the show begins strikingly with an urgent newsflash from a newsroom, videos pouring over the elevated bridge on stage, sounds cascading. Cynical PR types guzzle burgers while callously dismissing news of food poverty. The ensemble work in this scene is excellent, the actors articulate and clear.
After this opening, however, things are a bit uneven. Beneath the sneering figures is a community hall where women prepare to open a food bank. Hettie (Jade Khan) is the Hecuba figure – caring, maternal, desperate to help those in need. She is assisted by Riley (Áine McNamara) – not a character easy to identify in Euripides. Cassie (Ema Pasic), however, is clearly Cassandra, cursed with the gift of prophecy but fated never to be listened to. Andra (Aneeza Selina Ahmed) is the naively optimistic, pregnant Andromache.
The only male character in this group is Tallon (Zamir Mesiti), whose role is harder to fathom. There is much talk of his ‘research’, which will in some way be important to the cause, but the idea is never fully developed. Another unfleshed-out section comes when Hettie is told by a police officer that her daughter Jasmine has been involved in an incident and is dead. It’s a faint echo of the death of Andromache’s young son, Astyanax. But nothing much comes of this. Hettie refuses to identify the body and then seems to forget all about her.
Meanwhile, the powerful ones on the bridge – are they meant to be gods? – grow increasingly vicious. The more they cackle in unison as they articulate cruel ways to get rid of the poor, the more they torture the hapless good guy Potter (Cameron Goodchild) with burger buns, the more pantomimic they become. Helen, in a watchable performance by Jessica Rose Saunders, finally makes an appearance. She is the chancellor to the oddly-named Merlin, the prime minister who is also her husband. Cream-suited and high-heeled, she has all the dominatrix characteristics you’d wish for in a Netflix boss lady. But by this stage, it makes little sense to keep trying to map these Trojan Women onto Euripides’.
That said, there are many effective scenes. The basic theme of confronting capitalist oppression is clearly spelled out, and there is some real passion in the acting. But there is a bit too much ranting, when words become lost, and a turn to melodrama in the enactment of terrifying visions. Lights flash as the cast intone ‘Horror’. These scenes sit uneasily with the clunky satire of the hypocritical Merlin and his henchmen and his craven appeasement of Helen.
The design, lighting and sound by Dada Kim, Ros Chase, Dinah Mullen, are all exemplary and create some thrilling theatrical moments. The young cast and director Roberta Zuric deserve every credit for taking on the challenge of this enjoyable, if uneven, play.
Runs until 28 September 2024
Entertaining but uneven
The Reviews Hub Score
