Orestes

Don't go to the Kirkland House Production of Orestes expecting the usual formal harmony of Greek drama. Sophocles is reported to have said that whereas he represented people as they should be, Euripides represented them as they are. And director Alfred Guzzetti seems to have had Sophocles' interpretation in mind; his Orestes is an arresting blend of the tragic, melodramatic, and sometimes even the comic which, at least until the end, is always human.

To be sure a solemn chorus, robbed in purple, comments on the action in song, but their accompaniment is a jarring, discordant arrangement of oboes, tympani, drums, and piano (written by Guzzetti himself). An angular, jagged set complements the music and helps undercut the stolid dignity of the purely tragic form.

Unlike the Oresteia of Aeschylus, in which Orestes heroically kills Clytemnestra to restore order, Orestes' matricide is set in a context where formal (although hollow) legality prevails. Orestes is at first sympathetic and wounded with guilt; in the course of the play his criminal nature is revealed. Euripides mocks the heroic ideal by showing Orestes' depravity and the depravity of those around him.

Paul Schmidt and Lynn Milgrim (Orestes and Electra) have nearly half the play's lines; and both are, for the most part, striking. Schmidt must make plausible a wide range of moods--from grieving madness and whispering weakness to hollow posturing and bloody rage. His resonant voice and liquid movements aid him in rendering realistic the avenger-turned-criminal.

Miss Milgrim's wild black hair, marvelously petulant mouth and expressive eyes make her Electra visually right. And aside from first-night nervousness and occasional unsureness with her hands, her performance as the sister who is at once compassionate and brutal matches the effectiveness of her looks.

Director Guzzetti is fortunate in his minor characters, for their performances range from passable to very good. Ellery Akers plays Helen as an empty-headed Fanny Hill, rather than a regal queen whose face launches a thousand ships, and plays her well. David Evett's Menelaus is properly unctuous and opportunistic. And Michael Nach's frenetic sing-song servility as a Phyrigian slave introduces the comic tone which diminishes the tragedy of Orestes.

Guzzetti directs his actors with care and imagination, but occasionally the music drowns out the chorus and the pace could be faster; actors tend to stare at each other before speaking.

Still the Kirkland players do well by Euripides in presenting an Orestes which becomes sardonic and satirical. When Appollo arises to save the assembled from destruction in the burning house of Atreum, the deus ex machina is not a convention but a joke; it's almost as if the Glorious Messenger has come to the rescue of Mack the Knife. The disparity between real and ideal which is developed throughout, the absence of any solution to the general corruption, is neatly brought home by Guzzetti's staging of a totally unconvincing resolution.