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Theater Emory: ‘Alcestis’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Even in his translations of Greek drama, Ted Hughes seems haunted by the ghost of his first wife, the poet Sylvia Plath, who committed suicide in 1963. Take, for instance, Hughes’ adaptation of Euripides’ “Alcestis,” which is about a Greek queen who dies so that her husband can be spared.
Scholars attending the Ted Hughes Conference last week at Emory University, where the late poet’s papers are housed, must have been struck by the parallels. In Theater Emory’s production of Hughes’ “Alcestis,” Maia Knispel plays the fragile titular figure, who leaves her husband and children behind in an act of tragic ambivalence.
Remorseful King Admetos (Dave Quay) can’t persuade his disabled, asthmatic father, Pheres (Vincent Murphy), to trade places with the mother of his grandchildren. Pheres hisses malignantly to his son that after his wife dies, he’ll “go crawl to some woman.” In a rare stage appearance, Murphy, the theater’s producing artistic director, stamps this character with a brand of grotesqueness that’s as mesmerizing as it is repugnant.
Hughes’ language is strewn with gorgeous imagery and anachronistic references (nuclear holocaust, morphine, asbestos) that make Euripides’ 2,400-year-old text feel at home in the modern world. Directed by Ariel de Man, the show borrows its architectural and fashion sense from Bollywood. Think monumental arches, palm-swept garden nooks and luxurious saris. (Sets are by H. Bart McGeehon, costumes by English Toole.)
“Alcestis” is also a showcase for the Out of Hand director’s trademark physicality and humor. Apollo (Adam Fristoe) enters by leaping off a balcony, and the rippled, bound body of Prometheus (Fristoe, again) writhes on an aerial perch under sensual lighting. Death (Justin Welborn) has rotten teeth and a dirty mind. And Heracles (Patrick Wood) is a rotund, spandex-clad degenerate who arrives with an entourage and immediately hijacks the palace disco.
This operatic staging is a weirdly rewarding diversion from the status quo. Though it would be tacky to give away the ending, we can say that Shakespeare probably had “Alcestis” on the brain when he wrote “The Winter’s Tale.”
THE 411: 7 tonight at Mary Gray Munroe Theatre, Dobbs University Center, 605 Asbury Circle, Emory University. 7 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at Emerson Concert Hall, Schwartz Center, 1700 N. Decatur Road, Emory University. $6-$15. 404-727-5050. arts.emory.edu.
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