FringeReview UK 2026
Iphigenia
Arcola Theatre, Dalston
Genre: Adaptation, Classical and Shakespeare, Contemporary, Drama, European Theatre, Live Music, Mainstream Theatre, New Writing, Short Plays, Theatre, Tragedy, Translation
Venue: Arcola Theatre, Studio 2
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
As we’re often told, a girl stands at an altar and 10,000 men are impatient for her to get on with it. She and others sometimes fade as a projection plays contemporary witness to fathers and daughters, goats, the nature of sacrifice. And goats. Euripides’ Iphigenia, in a new version by Stephen Sharkey, adapted and directed by Serder Bilis, plays at the Arcola’s Studio 2 till May 2.
Pacing is fleet, inexorable, even with those frozen minutes of contemporary video. Unmissable.
Review
Someone hasn’t laid out the props and apologises. There’s a king with further unfinished business. As we’re often told, a girl stands at an altar and 10,000 men are impatient for her to get on with it. She and others sometimes fade as a projection plays contemporary witness to fathers and daughters, goats, the nature of sacrifice. And goats. Euripides’ Iphigenia, in a new version by Stephen Sharkey, adapted and directed by Serder Bilis, plays at the Arcola’s Studio 2 till May 2.
Studio 2 can be daunting to design round, but Mona Camile’s striking set with diaphanous reveals (including portrait) shimmers round, exquisitely lit by Catja Hamilton in shifting lights. With sound and video design by Enrico Aurigemma, projections play with a sense not of intrusion but moments taken out of an inexorable path. That’s augmented with evocative interjections vocally on the flute (functioning as an aulos) from musician Kalia Lyraki. Camile’s opted for a modern-day general’s garb for Agamemnon, though the three women are dressed timelessly in robed dresses that could be Greek or mythic. It heightens the agon between male attire eternally updated for eternal war; and the women’s eternal sacrifices.
Despite these interventions, the Homeric myth of Iphigenia’s sacrifice is rendered here in a close version of Euripides, and the opening gambit slides into a brief recension of the reasons for the Trojan war.
Women from diverse backgrounds discuss father-daughter relationships, fraught or loving, and later the nature of sacrificing animals or indeed the role of sacrifice in war. Contemporary conflicts include Ukraine, Gaza and Iran. There’s no easy anti-war message delivered: some speakers are patriotic if not nationalistic. The cast too take moments out to give testimonials to a previous moment in their lives that might enlighten the pull of Iphigenia.
Agamemnon (Simon Kunz) enjoy a warm relationship with his daughter Iphigenia (Mithra Malek). Kunz, his general’s unform echoing a portrait, switches from indulgent paterfamilias, especially in. switchback memory that flips to an appalling present: and the roar of a commander, barking, guttural and implacable Frighted out of fear: in this case both the priests and gods (mainly Neptune/Poseidon, but this isn’t mentioned) who demand an ultimate sacrifice for the winds to rise, allowing the fleet to sail and pillage Troy.
Iphigenia must be sent for on a ruse of marriage to Achilles, and her mother not informed. Agamemnon revokes his first letter with a second, as he experiences a change of heart: but this second letter for whatever reason never gets delivered. Meanwhile Clytemnestra of course won’t hear of her daughter travelling alone. Kunz inhabits the guilty fury of a man fund out.
Against this, as Clytemnestra (Indra Ové) [points out, the no-sacrifice of their daughter will also prevent the slaughter of so many other women and children, indeed the destruction of an entire civilisation. Ové, warm towards her daughter, pleading and herself icy with Agamemnon, shows a frozen implacability of her own, presaging another revenge, deferred for a decade and unleashing more furies. Ové slowly wrenches from denial to fury and then grief, as she cradles her daughter.
Malek’s daughter moves from innocence to a proposed experience she can scarcely undergo hat Euripides and this production clarify is the toxicity around some father-daughter relationships that on the surface seems blessed. Not abuse in any conventional way, patriarchy is here enforced and its effects traumatise a child into believing herself noble in sacrificing herself.
In Euripides the ironies are laid bare to a degree: but the necessity for duty isn’t in doubt Without disrupting Euripides, modern interrogations back and forth discuss, dismiss or even endorse sacrifice. Were left to decide or contemplate first the nature of patriarchal prosecutions for war that pose as necessity. On the other, the response of those nations themselves (unlike Greece) not piqued or humiliated by as light (like the abduction of Helen) are just as urgent: the defence of a nation wrongly attacked – such as Ukraine or Iran – by a belligerent neighbour elicits notions of sacrifice. The UK’s history is littered with such instances like everywhere else. These voices too find their mark.
Iphigenia though really is caught in the belief systems of her culture, and bows to them wit courage. Malek inhabits this with a beautifully understated fragile nobility. Male as shown enough gusto in Iphigenia to let us know -as Euripides does – that she adores the sun and shuns the dark. Yet she must embrace it. Nevertheless, Ové’s magnificent Clytemnestra prays for a miracle, and one, with two eagles, seems to appear.
This Iphigenia compellingly draws out contemporary parallels, including witness from the cast, yet leaves Euripides intact. Its 80 minutes still compass the time-span of Greek tragedy, and the pacing is fleet, inexorable, even with those frozen minutes. Unmissable.
Associate Producer Philip Arditti, Associate Director Isik Kaya, Assistant Director Nil Uzer, Stage Manager on Book Fran Hurst, Production Manager Any Mitchell, Production LX Venus Raven, Costume Supervisor Natalia Alvarez. Photo Credit: Huseyin Ovayolu, Ikin Yum (Production).
