I didn't love everything about the Elektra, but it was so interesting. I found it particularly surprising that they have cut the first scene of the play so in theory there could now be audience members who don't know that the messenger scene is fake, which would change a lot about the play!
Although we asked people sitting immediately by us and they all knew the story, so in fact cutting that scene had not had that effect on them. I wonder if it did for anyone, or whether no one goes to Elektra without knowing it now...
Kate, I think in melding the tutor, Pylades and Orestes into one, Carson was making a perfectly sensible change to the story that sharpened its gender politics without losing any of Sophocles' dramaturgical highlights. This was in stark contrast to the tone-deaf changes in the text of the Oedipus.
Oh yes, it made sense as a choice, although interestingly it's not in the translation they were selling as the script so I don't know when it was made. I just think it simplified some of the original, in which we the audience know Electra is wrong a lot while she's on stage. So it's interesting!
If it were a less familiar play it might change even more than perhaps it did in practice, because without the announcement that it's a plan to fake his death, surely some people might only discover that he's still alive later. But as I say, on the night we didn't find people who didn't know anyway.
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