Bridge Theatre (studio)
17 July 2026 (released)
11 h
The Oresteia arrives at the Bridge Theatre encased in a revolving glass box, with the confidence of a production that believes ancient tragedy can still explain the modern world—not by preserving it in marble, but by dragging it into the glare of contemporary politics, corporate power and familial dysfunction. The result is a sprawling, often exhilarating, occasionally exhausting epic.
Simon Stone's adaptation, which he also directs, takes Aeschylus's blood-soaked cycle of vengeance and relocates it to the heart of a wealthy, influential family whose privilege offers no protection from catastrophe. The myths remain visible beneath the surface, refracted through the language of boardrooms, media scandals and generational trauma. Ancient destiny becomes modern inheritance: the burdens parents pass to their children and the violence that echoes long after the original crime.
Visually, the production is striking. Lizzie Clachan's revolving set exposes domestic spaces like specimens under glass, allowing scenes to slide seamlessly into one another. The effect is both cinematic and unsettling. Lives are laid bare, secrets become impossible to conceal, and the house itself becomes a machine for generating tragedy, endlessly turning while its inhabitants repeat the same destructive patterns.
What distinguishes Stone's version is its restless narrative ambition. The story fractures chronology and moves backwards and forwards through time with the pace of a prestige television thriller, unafraid to depart from its Greek inspiration without losing sight of its central themes. Revelations arrive before their causes; consequences appear before the actions that create them.
The performances are compelling throughout the production's three hours and 40 minutes. David Morrissey plays Christopher, the Agamemnon figure and founder of a tech empire, making the exhausted patriarch surprisingly sympathetic as he edges towards collapse. Mary-Louise Parker is magnetic as his explosive American wife, Monty (Clytemnestra), her acerbic wit slowly giving way to drunken fury as grief hardens into calculated revenge. The younger generation—played by Rosie Sheehy, Tom Glynn-Carney and Archie Madekwe—provide welcome relief with delicious social satire and entirely convincing ‘first world’ problems’ that turn darker by the minute.
There are moments when Stone's appetite for ideas threatens to overwhelm the drama. References proliferate, themes accumulate, and the production's considerable running time begins to show in its final act. Yet even when it risks overreach, its ambition remains admirable.
Stone may not resolve every contradiction in this courageous reimagining of the Greek trilogy, but its ambition is impossible to dismiss. Urgent, funny and furious, it argues persuasively that the forces driving The Oresteia—power, guilt, revenge and the search for justice—continue to shape the modern world.
Photo credit: Johan Persson
