Electra

Electra: a name many recognize from Ancient Greek theater (or pop culture movies). This weekend I got to watch Sophocles's Electra, adapted by Frank McGuinness, performed by the Seattle Shakespeare Company.

The first thing apparent about the script, even before the performance starts, is that it has been translated and adapted from the original Ancient Greek. However, as the script and performance did not call attention to this fact (it did not sound cumbersome or foreign), I will not spend time on this.

The monologue-like sectioning of portions of the play did link it to the monologues we're doing in class. In this case, the author often used monologues to "stage" events that happened in the past, or off-stage. While some of these are fairly "natural" occurrences for the characters (such as the messenger explaining Orestes supposed death), others are more abstract situations, for lack of a better term. Many of Electra's grief monologues replace dialogue she might have had with characters other than the Greek chorus. In this genre, though, the combination of slightly stylized speech in both monologues and chorus response/dialogue balanced in the performance. The script was not supposed to focus on the realism, but on a slightly surreal interpretation of events.

Perhaps because of this stylized aspect of Greek theater, the scripts that I've read, and likely Electra as well, have very little in the way of staging or performance notes. In this case, much of the impact of the play comes from the staging and interpretation rather than the script itself. The script sets the outline, and the director and actors must fill in the rest of the picture.

This performance filled in the outlines amazingly. The use of silence, contrast in voice, sudden shrieks (only one or two, but they were precisely effective), overlap of dialogue, and character arc and change brought the play to life in a way that Greek theater never really did for me when reading a script.

As for the arc of emotions in the script and performance: it was dense. The tagline the the Theater Company uses sums up this idea. "Filled with 90-minutes of raw emotions, this startling family tragedy will leave you shocked, dazed, and breathless for more." I don't know about the "breathless for more" part, as my brain definitely needed some time to recuperate. Conventionally, a writer breaks up an emotionally intense scene so the audience has time to process the tragedy, and then they are ready to process another tragedy should it occur. Electra very rarely allows for an emotional break. It isn't meant to, but the wall of grief can get in the way of an audience's empathy with the characters.

This is not to say that the impact of the play did not work. It had me teary eyed at at least one point, but the over all impact of the key moments might have been stronger if the script allowed for an emotional break (or a switch in emotions) more often. There was one point that some of the audience laughed at a line that, in most plays, would probably not have been considered comic. However, with the irony of the situation on stage, and the need to release that emotional build up in some way, the audience took the best opportunity they could find.

Mostly, playing off of the full range of emotions rather than draining the audience on tragedy works best in a play. However in the occasional play, like Electra, that emotional drain is, in part, the point they want to make.