Theatre review: Fine performance by Eileen Walsh in Girl On An Altar
David Walmsley and Eileen Walsh in Girl on an Altar, at the Abbey. Picture: Pat Redmond
- Girl on an Altar
- Abbey Theatre, Dublin
- ★★★☆☆
Marina Carr has form when it comes to reimagining Greek myth. Her version of Hecuba, which was at the Dublin Theatre Festival in 2019, was a tour de force, managing to psychologically penetrate and humanise these remote figures, whose stories and suffering typically lie far outside the realms of realism. She takes the same approach in this production, which transfers to the Abbey from London, giving another intimate, female perspective on the fallout of the Trojan War, but with more mixed results.
The titular girl on an altar is Iphiginia, daughter of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon, whom the latter has sacrificed, murdered with his own hands, at the beginning of the Trojan War to ensure his forces’ success. Now, it’s 10 years later, and Agamemnon has returned home victorious. His wife’s welcome is, as you’d expect, rather complicated.
Carr’s work as a whole constitutes an unflinching depiction of family, mother’s love, and, very often, what we now usually call toxic masculinity. In Cork actress Eileen Walsh, her Clytemnestra finds a compelling incarnation: channelling viscerally a mother’s pain, a woman’s strength, in a world where those things are warped and betrayed by men and their pursuit of power. “What is this terrible pact among men?” she wonders, as the misogynist cruelties pile up.
Agamemnon, meanwhile, is played with a burly squaddie’s demeanour, a sinewy muscularity, by David Walmsley. From his poised performance, we easily grasp why he’s revered, but equally understand how uneasy rests the head that wears the crown.
While much of the play proceeds in expository, descriptive monologue, the beating heart of the drama has to be the scenes between Clytemnestra and Agamemnon. Walsh and Walmsley deliver in terms of punch and chemistry. But the problem is it veers very close to sounding like a professional couple trying to work through their issues in one of those midlife-crisis TV dramas. There’s an odd Aeschylus-meets-Sharon Horgan feel as Agamemnon implores “Why can’t we make it right between us?” You half expect him to take the Ross Geller plea, and shout “We were on a break!” when he slits their daughter’s throat.
This language of couple’s counselling, Walsh’s sardonic, Cork-twang asides, and her fourth-wall-breaking eyerolls, all that red wine gulping: none of it conveys the mythic magnitude of what happened between these two. Bonking the au pair this ain’t.
As a result, the couple’s quarrels feel compartmentalised, their scenes at odds with the more stately monologues by which the action is advanced.
Just as the central performances are themselves excellent, so are the other aspects of this production. The projection designs by Will Duke sit beautifully on Tom Piper’s set, where the literal marriage bed is central. Annabelle Comyn directs with a sure hand. There is, then, much to admire, marvel at, even, but the play itself doesn’t quite cohere or give the audience a way towards its powerful emotions. We admire all the elements, but the whole feels unmoving, and somewhat academic.
- Until August 19
