1 The Living Art of Greek Tragedy Marianne McDonald, Ph.D., MRIA ...

and the ghost of Agamemnon is present also egging him on. It is a parable of revenge,
commemorating modern wars.
With only a small group of actors available, the Eumenides had to play other roles,
including the jurors in an ingeniously staged scene. The threat the Furies posed was frightening
enough but there is a buzzing of flies at one point to recall Sartre’s conceit in Les Mouches (“The
Flies”). In my opinion, Mitchell strangely missed the opportunity to continue the theme of
ghostly intervention by allowing Clytemnestra, Aeschylus’ ‘real’ ghost, to disappear from the
action. As a result the conclusion offered simple reconciliation presided over by a black Athena,
with none of the possible future threat that some critics and other directors have hinted at.
The production was presented in by far the smallest of the three theatres at the National.
The staging was in traverse with the audience on two sides. At the end of the play, after the
chorus had filed through, a huge door at the back of the stage area, which clanged open and shut
throughout the performance, shut with a ringing finality. It was a play of ghosts and vengeance,
followed by the optimistic ending often favored by the English.
The production was invested throughout with powerful images from past and present that
allowed Hughes’ striking, if not always literal text, to be given its full weight. All in all this was
a far more impressive representation of Aeschylus' themes and apparent intention than the other
production of the Oresteia at the Olivier, National Theatre in 1981 by Peter Hall.
Charles L. Mee has written a version of Agamemnon by Aeschylus (available on the
internet). It was produced by the Actors’ Gang in Los Angeles in 1994, and was directed by
Brian Kulick. He describes this play which he describes as:
Composed the way Max Ernst made his Fatagaga pieces
at the end of World War I, some of the texts were
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