GENEVA ENGLISH DRAMA SOCIETY

25 January 2005

PLAYREADING - AGAMEMNON

The long and bloody siege of Troy is over. The scene of this drama is the palace of Argos (Mycenae). Queen Clytemnestra eagerly awaits the return of her royal husband, Agamemnon, leader of the Greek armies. She intends to murder him, apparently as revenge for his sacrificial killing of their daughter Iphigenia, but really to retain power and thus to protect herself and her incestuous lover, Agamemnon's nephew Aegisthus. She sets out to invoke the anger of the gods by persuading Agamemnon, over his vehement protests, to enter the palace on a red carpet - an honour exclusively reserved to the Immortals. His prisoner and concubine Cassandra, Trojan princess and prophet of Apollo, predicts his doom, her own death and the fall of the house of Atreus. Her blessing and curse are always to be right but never to be believed. The curse holds good. Clytemnestra and her lover, Aegisthus, are left free to murder the two and to look forward to further successes in the future. But what action will Orestes, son and heir to Agamemnon, take? In honour, he must avenge his father's murder. Yet matricide is the worst crime of all ...

Written for the Athenian March festival, The Great Dionysia, in 458 BC, Agamemnon, the first play of The Oresteia Trilogy by Aeschylus, is a powerful tale of bloody family conflict. It was also a turning point in the history of theatre as in it Aeschylus introduced the concept of a full cast of actors whearas Greek tragedy until that time had been limited to a presenter and a Chorus of unpaid dancers and acrobats. Ted Hughes's widely acclaimed translation was first performed at the National Theatre, London, in 1999.