Iphigenia comes to the Arcola, breathing new life into the 2,500-year-old play. Translated by Stephen Sharkey and directed and adapted by Serdar Biliş, it is a masterful adaptation of the Greek classic.
Iphigenia in Aulis is the last of the surviving works of Euripides and takes a similar vein to the rest of his plays: men away at war, women lamenting. Agamemnon must sacrifice his daughter, Iphigenia, lest his troops perish en route to Troy, modern-day Troya Müzesi in Biliş’ home country of Türkiye. Clytemnestra, Iphigenia’s mother and Agamemnon’s wife, is not a fan of sacrificing her daughter, understandably, and delivers several tragic monologues in classic Euripidean form.
Iphigenia begins with the flute work of superb Greek musician Kalia Lyraki, with Clytemnestra (Indra Ové) backstage, Agamemnon (Simon Kunz) taking the centre and the unassuming Iphigenia (Mithra Malek) sitting in the audience. Agamemnon is immediately making the audience laugh, and the play sets itself up as a comedy, a genre more associated with Kunz than Euripides, but it works very well. A prolonged fourth-wall break where the AirPod-clad Kunz explains the background of the play helps to ease the audience into the production, giving a very unique spin to a tragedy that has been done to death.
Kunz shows the full mastery of his acting talent by being able to ping-pong between comedy and tragedy almost mid-sentence. Several interviews of real women discussing life, death, child and parenthood break up the drama. The production is also peppered with tasteful interludes where the actors give us personal stories of their childhoods and their relationships with their parents. The production feels both fantastically ancient and extremely contemporary.
With only three actors carrying the load, there is no room for a weak performance; each side of the thespian triangle performs exceptionally. Indra Ové, of Star Wars fame, performs the role of Clytemnestra with grace. The mother of a condemned daughter, Ové does the emotional heavy lifting in this production and delivers magnificently. Mithra Malek is outstanding. She plays such a convincing martyred princess that the audience almost ran to her aid. Kunz’s Agamemnon is a force of nature; bringing the humanity out of Greece’s most famous tyrant, the audience watches a man’s inner struggle with a truly impossible task. His performance proves he is as timeless as Euripides.
The stage production is minimal. The costumes are excellent: Ové looks tastefully regal, Kunz’s military uniform is reminiscent of a Cold War–era Soviet Union general, even if the character of a power-mad world leader sacrificing innocent lives for his own hubris seems to be alluding to Trump. Malek is the picture of a Greek princess.
A play about loss, sacrifice, Eurasian conflict and the casualties of war. Serdar Biliş mixes ancient theatre and modern world events together to make this classic seem like it was written yesterday. The interview clips bring the audience back to reality, a reality where the names have changed but the war games remain. Iphigenia runs until 2 May.
Listings and ticket information can be found here
