Children of Hercules

Synopsis

Euripides' masterpiece, Children of Hercules tells the gripping tale of dispossessed refugees seeking asylum in a city like ours. Fleeing persecution from their dead father's enemy, the children of Hercules are cast out of their homeland in a desperate search of safety, winning asylum in Marathon. But the price of liberty is a bloody one, and soon their persecutors are waging war on the city and all its people.

Our Review:

11 July 2005

Phil Willmott is a brave man. Not content with turning up in half a dozen different venues in London, he's now colonised a stone amphitheatre next door to City Hall. I wish I could say I'd enjoyed his latest enterprise, a modern dress version of Euripides' Children of Hercules, more. Though, to be honest, it would have taken something pretty extraordinary on a cold, windy night, 24 hours after Thursday's bombings.

It was two years ago that Willmott, walking past the Scoop, saw its potential. He wasn't wrong. His first two seasons - modern versions of Oedipus and Agamemnon and, last year, Shaw's Androcles and the Lion - drew the crowds. For one thing, it was free (thanks to support from More London, the bankside development agency and other sponsors). And the backdrop is spectacular: Tower Bridge, the Tower of London and the Thames.

Structurally the Scoop, with its semi-circular sweep, offers a perfect setting for epic story-telling. Despite the usual ni...

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