The Oresteia
Aussie prodigy Simon Stone seems to be the de facto resident director at the Bridge these days: last year he directed Ibsen’s The Lady from the Sea, and next year he’ll direct Chekhov’s Ivanov. This year, he tackles The Oresteia, which is credited as ‘Aeschelus and others’. That’s a nod to the fact that Stone’s adaptations are extremely free and easy and you can expect only the loosest relationship to any one specific version of the story of Orestes, the son of Agamemnon who takes violent revenge on his mum Clytamnestra for his father’s murder. Excactly how Stone’s Oresteia will play out is TBC, but the sole line of description suggests a typicaly free adaptation: ‘A contemporary family wakes up in a Greek myth and can’t seem to find a way out of their hellish destiny.’
Stone’s plays invariably come with big names attached, and The Oresteia boasts a cast headed by US star Mary-Louise Parker as Montie (the character names seem to have little bearing on the originals), David Morrissey as Christopher, Tom Glynn-Carney as Augie, Rosie Sheehy as Alice, Lloyd Hutchinson as Melville, John Macmillan as Jerome and Archie Madekwe as Lorenzo.
