As a disclaimer, I’m only familiar with Anne Carson’s translation of Oresteia, but I’m a big fan of it. I’m also a big fan of the playwright and was very keen to see this intersection of two of my interests.

So much to think about here. It’s not a strict adaptation, though I dont think anyone came in expecting that. Without spoiling it, the story goes off the rails. At first, I wasn’t sure if I loved that, but then I remembered that actually changing things is the fun part of adaptation. It’s fitting that a queer futurist adaptation of a story of a cursed bloodline, a metaphor for the collapse of a once great nation, a reflection on the ills of a society that turns away from the weak again and again, would imagine its way out of the myth.

There was so much to love here. So many staging and prop choices that worked so so well for me. The gatorade bottles, the blood and the violence and the wine-dark sea, the constantly-shifting lighting delineating place and time, the plastic veil/curtain/screen/doorway/blanket that both conceal and reveal.

It all fit very well into these themes of seeing and not seeing, witnessing tragedy and doing nothing. The chorus narrates our shared experience of modern social existence, scrolling through videos of war bookended by cute dog reels. How do we act upon systems that seem infinitely larger than us? We can only believe our way out. We end the war. We end the vengeance cursed to our bloodline. Queerness allows us to see these possibilities.

I think for people who are not familiar with Oresteia, this could be a bit tricky to follow. Actors play multiple roles, sometimes simultaneously, across time and space. The dual casting of Iphigenia and Agammemnon was, in my eyes, inspired. I will be recalling the scenes of sacred deer killing with Athena/Agammemnon/Orestes for a long time.

I also cannot forget to mention that this play has plenty of Belyea’s signature humor, placed in ways that was jarring in the best way.

Overall, wonderful bones in this play. The artists mentioned at the end that this was a work in progress. I think if this is the quality of workshop productions in Edmonton, we have a very bright future ahead of us indeed.