The Oresteia
Aeschylus author Rory Mullarkey editor
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Published:29th Aug '15
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
A magnificent adaptation of Aeschylus's Oresteia by award-winning playwright Rory Mullarkey
He who learns must suffer. Before setting out for the Trojan War, King Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia. Many years later, when Agamemnon returns to his palace, his adulterous Queen Clytemnestra takes her revenge by brutally murdering him and installing her lover on the throne. How will the gods judge Orestes, their estranged son, who must avenge his father’s death by murdering his mother? The curse of the House of Atreus, passing from generation to generation, is one of the great myths of Western literature. In the hands of Aeschylus, the story enacts the final victory of reason and justice over superstition and barbarity. The original trilogy, comprising Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers and Eumenides, is distilled into one thrilling three-act play in this magnificent new translation by award-winning playwright Rory Mullarkey.
Rory Mullarkey's adaptation of these three Aeschylus plays . . . is undertaken with a spirit it would be hard to trump. . . . Mullarkey has adapted Aeschylus in a way that never fudges, conceals or distances. * Observer *
Witty, brash and steeped in blood . . . this is a big and boisterous account packed with sly wit and the sort of brash lines that wouldn't be out of place in a gangster film. * Evening Standard *
brilliantly evokes the sheer strangeness and horror of the play. Rory Mullarkey's translation follows the Aeschylean original faithfully and his lyrics make some attempts to evoke the percussive muscularity of the choruses. . . . I haven't seen anything quite as sickening or as stately as this version of these plays. * Spectator *
The verse rhythms are fluid and flexible, allowing for passages of lyric song, and the language is pithy and vivid . . . shows how "justice" - the word that resounds through Mullarkey's text like a drumbeat - easily transmutes into blood-soaked revenge. * Guardian *
Rory Mullarkey's new translation can't be accused of lacking scholastic commitment, or ear-enticing poetic carry-on. . . . the phrasing is pungent * Daily Telegraph *
Mullarkey's vibrant translation slithers from the poetic to the colloquial * Financial Times *
Rory Mullarkey's poetical, darkly funny but never murky adaptation proves stimulating and surprising . . . makes you laugh one moment and shudder the next. * The Times *
ISBN: 9781474274319
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 127g
120 pages