Elektra starring Brie Larson is a strange, boring play
Elektra at the Duke of York’s Theatre | ★★☆☆☆
After two and a half millennia, Sophocles can still pull in a crowd. This week saw the opening of Oedipus at the Old Vic, in which professional Creepy Lil’ Guy Rami Malek drawled his way through a thrilling evening of EDM and interpretive dance. In recent months we’ve seen Alexander Zeldin’s The Other Place, a despairing take on Antigone starring Emma D’Arcy, which turned the tale of kings and heroes into a bitter kitchen sink drama, and another Oedipus by the ever-wonderful Robert Icke.
Now it is the turn of Oscar winner Brie Larson to bring some Hollywood razzle-dazzle to Sophocles in Elektra, directed by a Daniel Fish still riding high from the success of his brilliant reimagining of Oklahoma!
Alas there is neither razzle nor dazzle in this ambitiously avant garde yet utterly inscrutable production, one which somehow turns a brisk 75 minutes into a miserable battle of attrition.
Larson certainly looks the part, with her suadehead haircut and Bikini Kill sleeveless t-shirt. Her Elektra stalks a sparse set on which various amps and mics and lights spin on a revolving stage, members of the chorus lurking at the back in silk gowns. A small blimp floats overhead for reasons I cannot fathom.
The play is largely a conversation between Elektra and the chorus, the former raging about her mother Clytemnestra, who recently murdered her father Agamemnon. Larson speaks, shouts and sings her lines into a microphone, occasionally switching it for a second mic that changes the pitch. As she bangs on about how sad and angry she is, every “no” is sung rather than spoken. Elektra has “noooooooooooo” peace. Hum, okay. Interesting. Why? Dunno.
There are other strange, neat ideas smattered throughout, such as the streaks of black ink that increasingly cover the set and actors as things progress. Does this represent the blood on their hands? The darkness in their souls? Probably, yeah.
Occasionally Elektra is joined by members of her family – her sister sister Chrysothemis (Marième Diouf), her dismissive mother Clytemnestra (Stockard Channing), her racing driver brother Orestes (Patrick Vaill) and her smug father-in-law Aegisthus (Greg Hicks). As Larson is the only one with a microphone, these conversations feel distant and one-sided, like trying to talk to someone when you have a really bad cold. Again: why? Perhaps Elektra’s feelings of rage simply drown out the world around her. That works.
Larson makes the best of a bad lot – she has real presence on that intimidatingly empty stage and, as a sometime musician, she sings brilliantly when called upon. But she can’t save this play from feeling like a chore. The whole thing has the air of a work in progress, an early read-through in which the rough edges are yet to be smoothed, that special something still to be added.
“Is this the brilliant Elektra?” asks a character at one point. I was wondering the same thing.
• Elektra is on now at the Duke of York’s Theatre