Chez Atreus

The frenetic gestures of the priest as he declares for the sacrifice, the monstrous padded figure of Agamemnon, wearing a mask suggestive both of cruelty and of agony, the wordless, shocked grief of Clytemnestra, and the innocence of the child in her saffron wedding dress, all build the tension toward the moment when the armed men surround the girl and strip off her robe; the frail adolescent body, naked except for white loincloth and breastband, the mouth stopped with a black gag, is lifted high up over Agamemnon’s sword, “as you lift a kid above the altar,” to create, for one instant of unbearable intensity, that pity and fear which Aristotle named as the emotions proper to tragedy. After this scene, no one in the audience can fail to understand the force which drives Clytemnestra on to her revenge. Here at last a director has found a way to penetrate the modern spectator’s insensitivity to spoken poetry and expose him to the beauty and terror which, for the ancient audience, stemmed from the words alone.

Para muitos, e especialmente para alguém que, como eu, teve a oportunidade de participar numa encenação do Agamémnon, toda esta crítica soará desafiadoramente familiar.