Customer Reviews

Euripides' the Trojan Women: A New Version

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Any actor doubting the visceral power of the Greek Tragedy must read Kennelly's take on this classic drama. Far from a passive dirge, this play is a loud battle cry and tribute to all outcast women in war and poverty who fight with cunning, reason, love, and dignity. This story could be set in Ireland, Bosnia, Rwanda...its power reverberates from beyond the ancient Greek grave. If you've given up on Euripides because of your starchy philosophy professor, pick up this edition from Bloodaxe Books!

Brendan Kennelly aptly adds the disclaimer that his "version" of Euripedes' Trojan Women is "A New Version." If you are seeking historical or literary accuracy to Euripedes' original text (which, by the way, is well worth finding), look elsewhere.

Kennelly's Trojan Women is an adaptation which preserves the poignant, raw flavor of the original, but it is raises some different questions than Euripedes' version did hundreds of years earlier. The stark suffering of humanity is never sugar-coated, even by Kennelly's beautiful verse. The language is at the same time compellingly lyrical and astonishingly raw.

As an actor who had the honor of performing this work (as Andromache), I can say that it is brilliantly suited to character motivation. Whereas Greek theatre was very much plot-driven, Kennelly's Trojan Women is character-driven; much more conducive to our modern form of "method acting". The production is captivating and visceral. As a scholar of classical theatre, I revere this adaptation as just that: a wonderful adaptation. I commend Kennelly for taking Euripedes' brilliant work and making his own beautiful creation from it, honoring the original text, but making it his own. It is well worth reading, but let us say that Peter Sellars would be much more eager to stage this play than Peter Hall.

This translation/adaption of Euripides's classic drama was, well, not good. Euripides's original leans toward feminism as it is, but Kennelly turns the play into a men-hating feminist diatribe. It can be an interesting and poetic take on the subject at times, but Euripides's message is lost in the bloodbath of the battle-axes. Talthybius and Menelaus, interesting and often sympathetic characters in the original, here emerge as weak and misoginous. Kennelly litters the play with profanity innapropriate to a classical tragedy -- for instance, Helen is called everything from (...) to (...) to (...), and the f-word, shocking and effective the first time it is used, gets to be too much after the fifteenth time it flies out of the Trojan women's mouths. This version does have its good moments, but eventually ends up as nothing but confused feminism. For example, Hecuba's use of water imagery in her final soliloquoy (totally Kennelly's invention -- there is no corresponding text for this in Euripides) seems only to drag on and lay on thick the extremely feminist message. Euripides knew how to present feminist messages in a much subtler way -- read the original.

I have just returned from a 3 hour performance of Kennelly's "translation" of Euripides' Trojan Women. I teach classical mythology and I gave my students extra credit for attending a local production. I wanted them to see a Greek tragedy on stage and not as dry words on a page. Kennelly's play has no Greek spirit, freely invents incidents, speeches and words, and is mind numbingly boring. Rape, captivity, slavery, death of loved ones, exile, homelessness, loss. Powerful things, but from after hearing them lamented again and again for over 2 hours, in a new-agey way entirely foreign to Greek culture, peppered with the obscenities noted by another reviewer, I felt like I was suffering more than Hecuba and her fellow Trojan Women. I, too, knew sorrow and loss. I wish I had my 3 hours back. This play is NOT Euripides and, viewed on its own merits, is NOT good.