FringeReview UK 2024
Sara Farrington A Trojan Woman
Stop the Wind Theatricals
Genre: Adaptation, classical, Classical and Shakespeare, Feminist Theatre, Fringe Theatre, Mainstream Theatre, New Writing, Short Plays, Theatre, Tragedy
Venue: King’s Head Theatre Main Studio
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
“They don’t kill civilians.” Euripides distilled. His The Trojan Women fined down to just one: A Trojan Woman adapted and rewritten by Drama-Desk-nominated Sara Farrington, consummately directed by Meghan Finn and performed by Drita Kabashi, arrives at King’s Head Theatre’s Main Studio till December 9th. Then tours.
An acclaimed pocket tragedy which yet carries Euripides’ weight in Farrington’s framing, it more than touches the heart: it snatches it and hands it back as a sad and angry consolation.
Review
“They don’t kill civilians.” Euripides distilled. His The Trojan Women fined down to just one: A Trojan Woman adapted and rewritten by Sara Farrington, consummately directed by Meghan Finn and performed by Drita Kabashi, arrives at King’s Head Theatre’s Main Studio till December 9th.
Kabashi introduces a fraught contemporary woman. In a pink puffa she pushes a buggy with a blue-clad baby round a stage studded with spotlights: two umbrellas flung near a plastic linen basket, a trash can and lid, as her lover phones from the eastern front telling her to stay put. But she’s looking for a bridge to safety. Warzones we know.
A Trojan Woman portrays both a woman fleeing war and one dreaming The Trojan Women; a tragedy realised by Euripides in 415 BCE. Like Aeschylus’ The Persians of 479 BCE, the first drama we know, the Greeks’ empathy for those they defeated, even extirpate is extraordinary. One wonders if we’ve lost that gift over 2500 years. “If you’re looking for sense, maybe we’re not the species for you” the woman says twice.
There’s an explosion, the woman falls. Till the next near the end brings her back. Whether she dreams Euripides unconscious or it’s a final few seconds hardly matters: it’s perennial. Farrington’s fusion is mesmerising as Kabashi rivets us down in 55 phenomenally character-packed minutes, the merest beat a minute of silence at this velocity.
Kabashi’s flicker takes in Andromache, a woman of no name since it means “Good Woman”. She’s desperate to save her and dead Hector’s son in that buggy, furious with Helen who began it all, eloping with (also dead) Paris. Helen herself arrives bound, but commands in a melting look or head-toss, daring execution. Hecuba with that basket-cage proves all woe. She doesn’t know the fate of her youngest child. Is mentally distressed Cassandra the only child left? Hecuba kneels to menial chores when previously “her feet never touched the ground”.
Kabashi’s superb with anger. Cassandra gleefully relays her own future murder to Hecuba as it takes in Agamemnon too. Andromache turns on Hecuba for bearing Paris, suave seducer invoking destruction for choosing one goddess when all are gorgeous.
Menelaus, with a geeky bike helmet to prop up his wibbly war-status, is putty in Helen’s hands. Which sets Andromache ablaze: indeed Andromache is the most richly realised woman here. The two umbrellas are chatty women Kabashi holds aloft convincing themselves nothing bad will happen. Yet as a last image of a speck of receding blue tells us, Kabashi’s image-wielding proves devastating.
There’s one moment when Athena, though on the Greeks’ side (she thought up the Trojan Horse) is informed Ajax has violated her temple, raping a women. It’s the temple’s violation that infuriates Athena; imperiously, Kabashi calls on Poseidon. He might obey Athena, but heeds no-one else. Gods take sides but they don’t care. “Pray to the Gods. They don’t hear.”
Characters include Greek messenger Talthybius. In Kabashi’s hideously meet-and-greet with a clipboard Talthybius smooths atrocities the women must endure: framing sexual slavery, death and “unfortunate” news. “I’m just obeying orders” goes so far, till in one moment – a bleak gleam of conscience – it doesn’t.
More than a speed-read of Euripides, this collapses like a black hole where everything accelerates to some omega-point of loss. We’re everywhere and nowhere. Kabashi humanises the imaginer of all this: a woman suffering ancient history; as barometric bombs fall rendering life itself archaeology. Kabashi’s range from sneer to irony through fury and desolate pleading is the more remarkable since it’s all delivered in under ten seconds.
Kabashi is aided by an unaccountably uncredited lighting operator and design (like the fine equally-uncredited post-minimal score). Reds, blue-violets as well as stark white chiaroscuro sculpts Kabashi, as she carves words and gestures. Synched in a milli-second, lighting and acting recalls Emily Carding’s extraordinary work, particularly in her own Quintessence, where the slightest flick of lighting flips a performance. This compares in quality, though Kabashi’s more active in her tour-de-force. It should leave you as breathless as every audience lucky enough to be seared by it.
A devastating reminder, a pocket tragedy which yet carries Euripides’ weight in Farrington’s framing, it more than touches the heart: it snatches it and hands it back as a sad and angry consolation.
Producer Rachel Ackerman, Tour & Stage Manager Hanna Yurfest General Management Aixa Amarante Naranjo for CDM Productions, Executive Producer Stop the Wind Theatricals
