Lulu Raczka – There Ought To Be Clowns

**Holy What’s Antigone at the New Diorama shifts the focus of Sophocles’ play onto two young sisters to powerful effect**

“Do you think they’ll come back from the war…both of them?”

There’s a pleasing trend toward giving voice to the under-represented through revisiting familiar narratives (cf Six, & Juliet; Teenage Dick) and Holy What’s new production of Antigone makes for a fine addition to that canon. Lulu Raczka’s adaptation of Sophocles’ Greek classic resites the story as an ongoing interaction between the two sisters Antigone and Ismene and proves all the more compelling for it.

The result is a restless psychological study that forefronts sisterhood, teenage emotion and the impact that trauma has on those left behind. Set in the elegant but eerie space of Lizzie Leech’s metatheatrical design, Tig and Issy play a series of games to try and distract themselves from the fact that their Uncle Creon has locked them in while their brothers Eteocles and Polynices wage civil war against each other. But games only go so far… Continue reading “Review: Antigone, New Diorama”

“We all make – sacrifices”

And still the Greeks come. The Gate Theatre have taken Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis and asked four playwrights to react to it with short plays from varying viewpoints, giving us The Iphigenia Quartet. Split into two double bills, we thus get Caroline Bird’s Agamemnon and Lulu Raczka’s Clytemnestra, and Suhayla El-Bushra’s Iphigenia and Chris Thorpe’s Chorus, two strong pairings that crack open the Greek tragedy and offer a kaleidoscope of responses.

Such is the enduring resilience of the original that it can take diverse treatments – to wit, the trio of Oresteias that graced British stages last year – and packed into this studio intimacy and seen on the same day (as I saw them) or not, the impact is visceral and considerable. From the raw anguish of Bird’s duelling parents to Raczka’s academic debate spun on its head, from El-Bushra’s family of Marines to Thorpe’s babbling chorus of commenters, the shifting focus is at once enigmatic and entertaining. Continue reading “Review: The Iphigenia Quartet, Gate Theatre”