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The Furies

This event has now finished Until Sun Feb 26 Old Vic Tunnels, Station Approach Rd, SE1 8SW Full details & map

Theatre: Fringe

The Furies The Furies - © Bianca Harvey

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Posted: Mon Feb 13 2012

Queuing to enter the dank tunnel below Waterloo Station for Kindle Theatre's 'The Furies' you could easily believe you were waiting for a late night gig - which sets the scene nicely for this heavy metal reworking of the ancient Greek tragedy of Clytemnestra, a tale of love, revenge and murder.

But it doesn't fully prepare you for the hour-long gothic musical onslaught which awaits. The story - most famously dramatised by Aeschylus - is played out by three vengeful sirens who, accompanied by a live band, sing their way through a rock-style operetta of the legend with impressively violent rage.

If audience participation isn't your thing, look away now as the crowd (especially the men) are picked on, pulled, pushed and groped. Combining this angry allegory with heavy rock music sounds like it should be the perfect marriage.

But the story gets lost in the wailing. And if you're over the idea of nipple tape as empowerment, what should be a passionate woman's tirade feels more like screeching, over-sexed, hysterical stereotypes writhing across the stage.

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Old Vic Tunnels, Station Approach Rd, SE1 8SW

Old Vic Tunnels

The potential of the dank manmade caverns beneath Waterloo station was realised by theatre company Punchdrunk and the Old Vic in 2009, when a...

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Transport Waterloo 

Telephone

0844 871 7628

http://www.oldvictunnels.com

£17.50

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Comments & ratings

By Kindle - Feb 15 2012

you are right- it is easy to associate the imagery with one particular agenda: empowerment is a word you have chosen to use when looking at this work, but perhaps provocation or ugly is another. 'Should' THE FURIES be a passionate woman's tirade? - are all violent outburst in the moment of blind fury eloquent and measured? this is your response to experiencing the work- which of course is valuable and it has clearly provoked a strong reply; a good cause for discussion. All too often (and easily) women labelled hysterical for expressing wrought emotion using the sounds peculiar to them and engendered by their anatomy- this is something inescapable and particular to our sex.

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