The House of Pelops
The events leading up to the play
About the Dramatist
About the Performance
The Supernatural
Apollo
The Cast
The Production Team

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The House of Pelops, tracing its lineage from the god Zeus through to the characters in the play. Characters in italics have roles in the play.

Agamemnon (king of Mycenae) and his brother Menelaus have gone to Troy in Persia to rescue Menelaus's wife, Helen, who has been abducted by Paris. This results in a long war.

Whilst Agamemnon is away his wife, Clytemnestra, takes a lover called Aegisthus. On Agamemnon's return they murder him.

Later Orestes, Agamemnon's son, together with Pylades avenge his father's murder by slaying his mother, Clytemnestra, and her lover Aegisthus.

The play opens with Orestes exhausted, hounded by the Furies and tenderly nursed by his sister, Electra. The Argive democracy is about to pass judgement on them for their crime. The death sentence seems imminent

Orestes stabs Aegisthus - Electra warns Orestes that Clytemnestra is about to hit him with an axe (Vase painting 5th Century B.C.)

Euripides (c 480-406 B.C.) was the third of the three great Attic tragedians, the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles. He was born in Salamis, on the day of the great naval battle off that island.

Euripides' first play The Daughters of Pelias is said to have been produced in 455 B.C. He wrote eighty to ninety plays, five of which won the tragedian prize at the annual Dionysian Festival in Athens, his first victory being in 441 B.C.

Around 408 B.C. Euripides went to the court of Archelaus, King of Macedonia, where he died, "accidentally" torn to pieces by the King's hunting dogs.

Eighteen of Euripides' plays still survive including Medea, Hippolytus, Bacchae and Orestes.

Generally Euripides selected for his tragedies "situations" of violent stress, showing men or women in the grip of passion or torn by conflicting impulses as shown in Orestes.

Euripides frequently scandalised public opinion by questioning traditional religion and morality in his plays. This is illustrated in Orestes in the moral and legal debate as to whether Orestes was right in avenging his father's murder by killing his mother. Euripides also questions the influence of the gods using the character Apollo. How involved is Apollo? Did he really push Orestes into murdering Clytemnestra? Or, is Orestes simply shrugging responsibility by blaming a god?

Orestes is supposed to be the sixth play that Euripides wrote. His popularity increased after his death and his plays were revived more frequently than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles.

Mask for a tragic heroine

The original Greek performances involved two or three male actors, who played several parts. Hence the use of masks to make the playing of several parts possible. The masks were made with expressions of grief, etc. and were important because they enabled the members of the audience at the back of the large amphitheatres of the Acropolis and Epidauros to see the action.

The performance always included a chorus of up to thirty people who were members of their democracy, their training was usually paid for by a patron, often a politician.

Although in this production of Orestes very few of the cast double up, I still definitely wanted to work with masks. This was for two reasons; (i) because it is one of the distinctive aspects of ancient Greek performance and therefore unusual and (ii) more importantly because I did not want the cast to rely on facial expression. By wearing masks the cast is instantly obliged to increase the variation of tone and volume of their voices and as well, increasing the physicality of the acting.

Other aspects of Greek tragedy were the background of a building, which is represented by the four pillars and the steps in this production and the altar because the plays were always performed as part of the religious festival, The Dionysia.

I do not profess to have adhered to the Greek tragedy style dogmatically. What I have attempted to do is to combine modern acting techniques with the visual aspects of Greek drama, using a modern and lively translation to produce a visually attractive and physically energetic performance. Hopefully this production will appeal to classicists and theatre-goers alike.

Adela Gonsalves - director

The Furies in this play are also known as Eumenides. They are represented as winged women with snakes about them.

The Furies are said to be born from the earth when it was fertilized by drops of blood from the mutilated Uranus.

Their principle function was to avenge fathers, or more often mothers, upon their undutiful children. In the famous case of Orestes, the Furies hounded him into insanity for murdering his mother.

When a man failed to avenge the murder of a member of his family the Furies avenged the death on him. Therefore this left Orestes in an insolvable dilemma: since his mother had killed his father, he would have been punished by the furies if he killed her or if he did not.

Orestes Kills Clytemnestra. A Fury looks down from above (Vase painting - 4th Century B.C.)

Apollo was the son of Zeus and Leto and brother of Artemis. He was the god of medicine, music, archery and prophecy. He was also the god of light (hence his epithet "Phoebus the bright") and youth, sometimes identified with the sun.

Apollo's first feat was the seizure of Delphi for his abode by destroying its guardian, the dragon-snake called Python who personified the dark forces of the underworld.

Apollo held a prominent position amongst the gods and was widely worshipped. The chief centres of his cult were Delphi, the island of Delos and, for the Greeks of Asia, Didyma near Miletus.

Electra	Philippa Booth
Helen	Kathie Arundell
Hermione	Dani Razabi
Orestes	Robin Clifford
Menelaus	Tony Strong
Tyndareus	David Freeman
Pylades	Mike Purvis
Messenger	Georgina Gunn
Coryphaeus	Clare Inglis
Phrygian Slave	Russell Thompson
Apollo	James Kerr
Chorus	Margaret Blackwell Val Foskett Jane Lewis Penny Stone Katrina Vestuto

Stage managers	Eve Manghani Sarah Hewitt
Props	Jane Blumire
Costume	Patience Opara
Masks	Philippa Booth
Sound and lighting	Simon Harris
Music	The Keynotes (Praveen and Sunil Manghani)
Artwork	Philippa Booth Simon Harris
Programme design	Simon Harris
Programme text	Adela Gonsalves
Box office	James Grayston
Front of House	James Grayston Erika Mohamed Pam Doolan Pat Bryant
Photography	Chris Nash
Director	Adela Gonsalves