Euripides: Electra

Abstract

This new introduction to Euripides’ fascinating interpretation of the story of Electra and her brother Orestes emphasizes its theatricality, showing how captivating the play remains to this day. Electra poses many challenges for those drawn to Greek tragedy – students, scholars, actors, directors, stage designers, readers and audiences. Rush Rehm addresses the most important questions about the play: its shift in tone between tragedy and humour; why Euripides arranged the plot as he did; issues of class and gender; the credibility of the gods and heroes, and the power of the myths that keep their stories alive. A series of concise and engaging chapters explore the functions of the characters and chorus, and how their roles change over the course of the play; the language and imagery that affects the audience’s response to the events on stage; the themes at work in the tragedy, and how Euripides forges them into a coherent theatrical experience; the later reception of the play, and how an array of writers, directors and filmmakers have interpreted the original. Euripides’ Electra has much to say to us in our contemporary world. This thorough, richly informed introduction challenges our understanding of what Greek tragedy was and what it can offer modern theatre, perhaps its most valuable legacy. The final volume in the Bloomsbury Companions to Greek and Roman Tragedy , Euripides’ Electra offers a short, comprehensive exploration of the play in eight chapters, followed by a ninth that discusses important translations, productions and adaptations of Electra up to the present day. Major topics include the theatrical and festival context in which Euripides worked; a dramaturgical breakdown of the plot and action; earlier versions of the story (Aeschylus, Sophocles) and the way Euripides incorporates, rejects and transforms traditional elements; the dramatic characters and Chorus, and the challenges they pose for actors; the language of Electra (diction and word choice, rhetoric, poetry, thematic clusters, choral lyric, aphorisms); the material aspects essential to the play’s production (setting, costumes, props and corpses); issues surrounding gender, sexuality, maleness and motherhood; the conflicts between wealth and poverty, mortals and immortals, and humans and natural world; and the place of myth in coming to grips with these intractable issues. The chapter on the reception of Electra focuses on the 20th and 21st centuries, including productions by Granville Barker (Gilbert Murray translation), Kostas Tsianos and Ivan van Hove; adaptations by Robinson Jeffers, Eugene O’Neill, Jean Giraudoux, and Marguerite Yourcenar; and the film of the play by Michael Cacoyannis. Written clearly and without obfuscation, Euripides’ Electra will prove useful for students of Greek tragedy, ancient Greek culture, and theatre history, as well as for actors, designers, directors, and audience members drawn to Greek tragedy in general, and to Euripides in particular.