THE HOUSE
In the Aeschylus tale the torment begins when Atreus and Thyestes, the two sons of the king of Argos, fight over their father’s throne. Later Thyestes seduces Atreus’s wife, which causes Atreus to seek revenge by feeding the unwitting Thyestes his own children. Thyestes lays a curse on the house of Argos, which comes to fruition during the reign of Atreus’ son Agamemnon.
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We know the story from this point forth as the Trojan War, ten years in which Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter Iphegenia to the gods in exchange for sailing wind, enslaves the doomed prophet Cassandra, and eventually dies at the hands of his wife, Klytemnestra, and Thyestes’ son Aegisthus.
There’s also a surprising bit of exploitation in a scene featuring Beatriz Cervantes as Cassandra. As Cervantes goes about prophesying, men whistle and taunt her. Worse, Cervantes responds to their catcalls with an inexplicable and not too subtle striptease, finally exposing her breasts. Yet later, in a scene in which the Furies are bathing Orestes, when nudity would make infinitely more sense, the director makes a point of keeping Gutfreund covered.
On the evening I went, Tatom, playing Apollo descending from the skies, got stuck in midair when a pulley refused to work. For the longest time no one moved, leaving Tatom dangling above the stage long after he’d run through his lines. He resorted to calling out to Orestes with macho exhortations until he was finally freed from his perch by a stagehand. Unfortunately, that was the highlight of the show.
