Phaedra

Synopsis

Tragic epic. Portrait of a powerful woman torn apart by sexual obsession. Phaedra is a woman stricken with a blind, all consuming love for a young man half her age. Her step-son. She struggles to reconcile her uncontrollable desire with her duty and obligations as a wife, mother and public figure.

Our Review:

24 April 2006

There are two virtually insoluble problems at the heart of any attempt to revive Jean Racine’s 1677 declamatory French masterpiece. First, how do we understand the mythological and supernatural elements in a tragedy where the heroine is a victim of heredity, descended from the sun and half-sister to the Minotaur? Her adulterous (half-incestuous) passion for her stepson, Hippolytus, whose mother was an Amazonian queen, is a direct consequence of this.

Secondly, Racine’s glorious, rolling verse reflects the sonorous, doom-laden situation at the court. Only one translation in recent years, that of Robert David MacDonald for Glenda Jackson’s performance in Glasgow and at the Old Vic, came close to approximating the doleful, soulful tread of the music.

At the Donmar, Irish playwright Frank McGuinness rejects the tradition of rendering Racine’s 12-syllable alexandrines into Shakespearean ten-syllable iambics, fracturing Racine’s majestic classicism with a busy hotchpotch ...

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Latest User Review

86.130.201.183) - 30 May 2006:

What's unusual about Racine's take on Greek tragedy is that all the action happens offstage ! Frank McGuinness' adaptation is excellent, where many modern adaptations seem trite and tacky. Tom Cairns staging is simple, allowing the story to unfold without too much 'business' getting in the way. There isn't a weak link in an excellent ensemble, led of course by the wonderful Clare Higgins, who continues to thrill in everything she does. It isn't the magical night Hecuba was here at the Donmar, but that's probably because it isn't such a good play. But you have to go and see it none the less. ...

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