Andromache

by Jean Racine translated by Edward Kemp

seen at RADA (GBS theatre) on 5 June 2015

This production, directed by Edward Kemp and designed by Lucy Alexander, features students in their third (final) year of RADA's degree in acting. The cast:

Orestes - Freddie Meredith

Pylades - Will Apicella

Pyrrhus - Joe Idris-Roberts

Phoenix - Peter Mulligan

Andromache - Rosie Sheehy

Hermione - Stefanie Martini

Cleone - Kathryn Wilder

Cephisa - Taha Haq 

The GBS theatre is in the basement of RADA's main building, a space which an be configured in many ways. For this production, the audience were seated in long rows on either side of a narrow raked 'marble' passageway emerging from a sandy floor at one end and leading to a throne at the other raised end. (The throne was later removed; steps down from this end led to a sanctuary.) Beyond the raised end, the exposed brickk wall had reliefs of two ancient warriors, presumably of Achilles (the father of Pyrrhus) killing Hector (the husband of Andromache). High above, amidst the lighting battens, a similar strip of 'marble' was suspended as like a ceiling, or even a reflection of the floor.

This design constrained the actors to confront one another forcefully in pairs with one necessarily higher than the other, and with absolute focus on each other; only the arrival of another character would cause someone on stage to devote more than a glance to either side. This was brilliantly effective in underscoring the extreme austerity of Racine's dramatic focus, as the play proceeds almost entirely by encounters between pairs of characters; Pylades, for example, only speaks to Orestes, and Orestes never meets Andromache. The layout also forced the audience to be extremely attentive to the slightest gesture of a character, and especially to any direct response that one might have to what the other was saying.

The translation, prepared by the director, is in loose rhyming couplets. At first the inherent artificiality of this arrangement jarred a little, but the cast was uniformly skilled in verse speaking, such that the rhymes served to accentuate their passions and deep seriousness, and soon hardly intruded as a verbal distraction. Indeed, Freddie Meredith as Orestes produced hesitations and muffled exclamations of disbelief or hope into the expected rhythms of the metre so as to render the formal speech patterns as spontaneous utterances, a remarkable effect. 

Rosie Sheehy as Andromache evoked the grieving widow and protective mother with great feeling, and lent a physical force to her rejection of Pyrrhus's advances by shrugs of revulsion each time he attempted to touch her. Andromache's complete devotion to her lost husband never descended to histrionics or obsession, and her inflexible rectitude countenances only one 'little trick' which in the event does not have to be executed.

Stefanie Martini's Hermione was a woman caught by conflicting passions of unrequited love and resentment, by turns provoking Orestes to murder and then rejecting him almost hysterically for having obeyed her. Her initial glamorous poise is finally revealed as masking wounded pride and bewilderment; the daughter of Helen of Troy has an impossible heritage. All this was beautifully conveyed in this performance.

So, too, Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles, has a hard father to emulate. Joe Idris-Roberts portrays a man unable to reconcile overmastering passion with statecraft, diplomacy or prudence, and so apparently buffeted by whim. It is not entirely obvious why either Hermione or Orestes should be attracted by anything other than his reputation, and it is perfectly credible why Andromache should not be interested in him except as the possible protector of her son. 

The resulting tangles of proffered hope and eventual disaster and disappointment are here wonderfully exemplified by committed acting expressed through the brilliance of Racine's intense dramatic style.