Women of Troy, The National Theatre (Lyttelton), London

Kate Duchene (second from left) and cast in the National's Women of Troy.

Rating: **/5

Friday, 25 January 2008.

I love being challenged by a piece of theatre possibly more than anything else in the world. To me, theatre has the potential certainly to entertain but most importantly to inform and to provoke. Since morality plays were in vogue in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries - and even earlier - drama has been a source of education. And director Katie Mitchell's latest production at the National Theatre, of a new translation of Women of Troy by Don Taylor, is certainly an interesting if flawed example of the power of theatre to develop in dynamic and thought-provoking new ways.

Favoring mood over plot, this production resets the action of the play from a realistic ancient Troy to an industrial holding bay, complete with a lift and a loading dock. Comments from the chorus, standard to Greek plays, are initiated by the simulated opening of the symbolic fourth wall between the players and the audience, signified by the sound of a door gliding open on mechanical tracks and a sudden concentration of light. This is a production that blends time periods liberally. Swing dancing abounds and pillars of sand spout from above. There is certainly no shortage of stage trickery. You get the picture, but what does it all add up to?

Dressed to the nines in evening gowns, the women of Troy in this production seem more like scorned lovers at a prom than prisoners of war, in limbo as they wait for their assignments as subordinates to the Greeks. Kate Duchene as Hecuba gives the evening's standout performance, full of ragged despair and hope beyond hope as the woman who may have borne the most casualties of all the women. Hers is a performance full of grief. Watching her claw at her dress compulsively, one can sense the profundity of her loss in the mere movement of her hands.

On the flip side of the acting spectrum, as Hecuba's daughter, Cassandra, actress Sinead Matthews performs rather less well, hurrying through dialogue in such a breathy demeanor so as to sacrifice meaning for movement. 

The physicality of the production as a whole, however, is impressive. Mitchell has obviously put much thought into the various elements of the play, particularly the integration of design and performance and the abbreviation of the text for her shorter, 80-minute production. She gives us many fascinating images to chew on, but one could chew on them for days on end perhaps without ever reaching any sort of satisfying conclusion. 

The final image given to us is one of neat resolutions, but what has come before has been so muddled that such a neat bow at the end seems almost inappropriate. Still I found myself wanting more guidance from Mitchell's directorial hand throughout. Mitchell seems dead set on creating theatre in a way that is distinctly her own, her marks on the text as clear to an audience as John Doyle's in one of his actor-musician productions of a Sondheim musical. But part of what makes the role of director so important in theatre is his or her ability to place a stamp on the production and, like a playwright, to assert a point of view. Mitchell's point of view seems to be heading in divergent directions. She presents us with a wide range of images, but leaves her audience to do its own sorting - compelling perhaps, but not fulfilling. With more consideration for text and less pure aestheticism, Mitchell could be a great theatrical director. For now, though, she seems instead a great visual artist.