Stroke for bloody stroke is paid to Haberle’s wicked Clytemnestra

They just don’t write epic tales of lust and murder like they used to.

While most of the actual violence in poet Anne Carson’s new translations of “Agamemnon” (by Aeschylus) and “Elektra” (by Sophocles) takes place offstage, the plays still manage to deliver the gore in two ways. First, the bloodstained set that assaults the audience the minute they walk in, complete with a Greek chorus of servants trying frantically to clean the walls with mops and rags. Second, the shocking blood red of Clytemnestra’s dress as she scampers around, tearing up the stage and anyone in her path.

“Agamemnon” derives its main strength from the sheer energy it exudes, particularly from Stephanie Roth Haberle’s gloriously wicked Clytemnestra. There is something profoundly fresh and exciting about a production of “Agamemnon” that can make an audience whoop and applaud Clytemnestra the moment she arrives on stage, her face streaked in red from the bloody murder of her husband, the king of Argos.

Reading the play in Lit Hum, class debate can erupt over the morality of Clytemnestra’s actions, but here, she and the audience appear to be having so much fun that morality seems beside the point. Even a brutally realistic performance by Doan Ly as Cassandra—a slave girl who is sprayed with a hose, tortured, and murdered alongside Agamemnon—can do little to dampen the fun once that red dress reappears.

For some, this very contemporary and at times colloquial translation might seem inappropriate. Carson has tried very hard to make her Oresteia as accessible as possible, alternating long and poetic speeches with one-liners and gags. Far from seeming out of place, however, the interjection of humor into one of the most tragic of Greek tragedies allows one to see it in a new light. At times, it is campy and melodramatic, but it is never boring.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Elektra, the second play that makes up the first evening of An Oresteia. The scene stealing antics of Clytemnestra are replaced by the brooding temper tantrums of Annika Boras, who plays Elektra dressed in gothic attire—complete with black fingernails and heavy eyeliner. While Boras does a commendable job at conjuring up the fury that Elektra feels after the death of her father, she is unable to command the stage with the same ferocity as her mother Clytemnestra in the previous play. As a result, the second act of the evening suffers from a drop of energy.

Things pick up towards the end when murder once again rears its ugly head, but the evening feels more incomplete after “Elektra” than it did after “Agamemnon.” Perhaps this is a ploy on the part of Classic Stage Company to make sure audiences return on a separate night for the third play in the trilogy, Orestes.

This review covers Part 1 of An Oresteia: Agamemmnon & Elektra. Part 2: Orestes will be reviewed later this week on the Spectacle.