One Bloody Family

The characters of Clytemnestra and Orestes are more ambiguous and familiar: the career woman mother, the assassin with doubts (Orestes may have been a prototype for Hamlet). The gorgeous language of Aeschylus (in some English translations, at least) is entirely gone, replaced by contemporary dialog and ritual telegrams, like “Waiting — then things start happening all at once, and all the time.”

The Oresteia is famous for depicting the transition from revenge to justice, and there is a hint of it in Orestes’ brief misgivings in this play, but most of it occurs in the third play. So while the Ghost Road take on the middle play is involving as theatre, it is incomplete: more intriguing than tragic or transcendent.

The real interest is the stagecraft and the high level of acting by everyone in the company. Phelan and Brian Weir, as Hermione, had the most lines and were the most memorable, but the other actors also deftly created defined characters.

Many in the Ghost Road ensemble studied at Cal Arts but one member with them in Arcata was Ronnie Clark, an HSU Theatre graduate, who played Orestes.

Ghost Road is adapting all three plays for performance together in L.A. in the spring.

Elsewhere: Ferndale Rep is a week into a run of Noises Off, the clever comedy by Michael Frayn that matches backstage shenanigans with a bad play being poorly performed, in what has become a very popular farce. Information: www.ferndale-rep.org.

Thursday, Oct. 16, Humboldt State opens Shakespeare’s late romance, The Winter’s Tale, for two weekends. It’s directed by Rae Robison, currently on stage in North Coast Rep’s The Merry Wives of Windsor. Information at HSUstage.blogspot.com.

1 2 SHARE