Hecuba

Synopsis

Hecuba is a moving, bitter tragedy about the interrelations between those who hold power and those who suffer it. It is the slaughter of Hecuba's daughter Polyxena and the discovery of the body of her son Polydorus which leads to Hecuba's progress from grief to despair, as confronted by her tormentors, she is forced to yield her dignity, her values and her self-respect. Her humanity destroyed, she takes revenge so hideously brutal, she is transformed into "the bitch of Cyrossema"

Our Review:

15 September 2004

Having run the country for seven years, Tony Blair now seems ready to take over our theatres. After a star part in David Hare's Stuff Happens, there are any number of characters in the Donmar's Hecuba ready and eager to reassure others that they are doing things `because it's right'.

Moral self-righteousness is rife. There's Tim Piggot-Smith's slightly weak-kneed, sharp-suited general, Agamemnon, unwilling to condemn a man who has terribly betrayed a friendship by murdering the son of friends entrusted to him because, he says, `the army would not stand for that'.

Meanwhile, Finbar Lynch's Polymestor tries to put a reasonable gloss on things, admitting, yes, he killed young Polydorus, Hecuba and Priam's son, out of greed but also because had he lived, he'd have been a threat to peace. Even Odysseus, who comes to take Polyxena, Hecuba's daughter, for sacrifice, says "I mean well...I am not your enemy", whilst Hecuba, probab...

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Latest User Review

80.177.231.164) - 7 November 2004:

If there was a 10, I would give that score to this dazzling production which is one of the very finest renditions of Greek drama that I have seen. Claire Higgins provides an astonishingly emotionally raw performance. She is devastating. But all the cast are remarkable - Eddie Redmayne and Nicholads Day in particular are devastating. The images from this play will haunt me forever. ...

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