“What’s he to Hecuba or Hecuba to him?” asks Hamlet as he reflects on her power to so move the Player. Hecuba, the Queen of Troy, is an archetypal figure of tragedy. 

Euripides’ The Women of Troy begins with Hecuba lying prone on the stage overwhelmed with grief and then goes downhill from there. This play is essentially an extended, reverberating cry of grief. As Harry Love puts it in his director’s notes, Euripides’ aim in this play is a theatrical dismantling of “the framework that is the basis of moral and social existence”; the network of emotional relationships to family or community that define us as socialised human beings and make us us.

The character of Hecuba, Love goes on to say, is the vehicle for the playwright’s intent. As the play progresses, her “very being is progressively stripped away until all that remains is the consciousness of being stripped.” 

Hecuba is the focus of our interest for the entirety of the play. Bereaved wife, despairing mother, grieving grandmother, homeless slave; her grief is mercilessly compounded. Given her integral importance, this role is a demanding one for an actor. Marilyn Parker is to be congratulated, therefore, for her outstanding performance.

Parker is ably supported by an identically-dressed chorus of Trojan Women (Ingrid Fomison-Nurse, Megan Neill, and Teresa Wojcik), who embody the women in this city, brutalised and raped “to bear children for Greece.” Their voices are raised in woe and in song; beautiful, piercingly sweet laments composed and directed by Corwin Newall.

I find Newall’s sparse composition (which uses only voice and a solo violin played by Olive Butler) both affecting in itself, and a lovely mesh with other components of direction and design.  

Much is also added to the effectiveness of the production overall, and especially the impact made by the Chorus, by the outstanding costume design by Katarina Schwarz and Penny Love. The Chorus are identically dressed in severe grey robes and black headscarves. The sculpturally bold lines of Hecuba’s costume and headscarf, and the details of her jewellery, suggest a more luxurious, courtly past, but their drab, rough, texture evokes the grey ashes and fallen stone of Troy.

Cassandra (Megan Housley), Andromache (Annabelle Carpenter) and Helen (Brydie Ockwell) form a counterbalance to the chorus of Trojan women, as each character has a passage in which to recount their individual tragedy. Or, in the case of Helen, to explain to her estranged husband, Menelaus (Rory Furlong), why she really cannot be blamed for the fall of Troy.

Another difficult characterisation is that of Cassandra (Housley), whose bitter gift of prophecy is made more tragic when played against the open disgust at her capering displayed by Talthybius (Dan Goodwin). Housley acquits herself well, although at times her wild dancing seemed more merely energetic than truly frenzied, which undercuts the effects of her dire prophecies of the Greeks’ empty victory following the death of Agamemnon and the ruin of the house of Atreus.

Intriguingly, unlike other productions directed by Love, The Women of Troy is not performed in an archaic style. It seems to be set in a less specific, although still strongly middle-European, past. The effect for me, reinforced by elements such as the composition and costuming, is to evoke a sense of the universal nature of such suffering. Similar scenes have taken place in ancient — and not so ancient — times. When a city falls to its conquerors there is seldom any attempt to minimise the harsh fate of the survivors.

The bleakness of the ending is not exactly mitigated, but given ritual significance, by Brian Paavo’s impressive lighting design. Pillars of blood-red light stripe the backdrop as characters — seen only in shadow play — trudge towards their apocalyptic destiny. It is a powerfully realised moment: watching the passing of these shadows we come to seee that all that is left of these characters is the shadowy shell of the body; all essential life has been drained away by repeated atrocities. 

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Euripides’ drama about the plight of the Trojan women in the aftermath of war piles one tragedy on another. For almost 2500 years its unrelenting sadness has made it an extraordinary document of inhumanity, suffering and resistance. 

The University of Otago’s Department of Classics’ fine production will run at the Allen Hall Theatre until Saturday. Harry Love, who also directs, has written a fresh and very clear new translation. 

Marilyn Parker, in the role of Hecuba, the widow of Troy’s King Priam, has the largest and most demanding part. Tormented by grief, Hecuba also displays bitter fortitude and dignified, seemingly infinite wisdom. Parker’s mature, painfully and almost unbearably poignant performance is in itself a reason to see this production. 

She is ably supported by the other actors: Megan Housley and Annabelle Carpenter as Hecuba’s daughter Cassandra and daughter-in-law Andromache; Brydie Ockwell as the beautiful and manipulative Helen, the cause of all the trouble; and Rory Furlong, Dan Goodwin and Ashley Stewart. Young Sam Dorn-Cumming shows promise as Astyanax, Hecuba’s doomed grandson. 

Music composed and directed by Corwin Newall, and performed by violinist Olive Butler and singers Ingrid Fomison-Nurse, Megan Neill and Teresa Wojcik replaces the traditional spoken chorus, heightening the sense of tragedy and adding an operatic quality. 

Costumes by Katarina Schwarz and Penny Love place this production visually in the Balkans in the 19th century. 

The play’s themes of the pointlessness, degradation and destruction of war, however, are universal and timeless, and as relevant in the 21st century as at any time in the past. 

This accomplished staging of one of the world’s great tragedies provides a rare opportunity that should not be missed.

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