Theatre Review: The Complete Greek Tragedies (in one hour)

I’m doing that thing where I review a show you can longer see again. Soz.

For the second Wednesday night in a row, I found myself in a pub theatre. This time it was the rather excellent Rosemary Branch in Hackney - or Islington, or possibly both, I’m not sure - to check out Catharsis Theatre Company’s The Complete Greek Tragedies (in one hour). The title is literal: 31 big, complex stories in (just over) an hour.

Pub theatres are dead glamorous

It’s not difficult to predict the general approach that a production like this will take. There are enough ‘xxx in an hour’ type shows around now to know with some certainty that you’re going to see a madcap comedy of some description. And this is what is presented here. But Catharsis are cleverer than that. They set their production up as almost a play within a play - the setup (and it’s set up well, down to some joyously silly fake programmes) being that you’re going to a 31 hour production of all the tragedies but that one actor, despairing at having been in this same awful production for five years, appeals to the gods for help and is answered by Dionysus, god of drama etc, who duly obliges in forcing them to condense it down to an hour. Thus the idea is that the actors are all improvising and chucking stupid ideas into the mix with no preparation and no alternative but to give them a go. It allows the real life actors more freedom and allows the production to go in more and more ridiculous directions. And of course it’s just very funny.

The production is fantastically unafraid to mock the many and varied pretensions associated with theatre. (It was, for me, the perfect thing to watch after Network. Perhaps Ivo van Hove and team should try and catch Catharsis when they’re next in town.) It tackles this from all angles; traditional theatricality, the idea of ‘accessibility’ and drama school nonsense (“I can’t die, I’ve got an MA in physical theatre”) all have their bubbles thoroughly burst. It uses a lot of parody sequences all of which are fun and some of which are glorious: Medea in Chelsea is perfect but for the nagging suspicion that somewhere an TV executive is lining it up to sit in a double bill with Bromans on ITV2, and there are great takes on The Handmaid’s Tale and The Cellblock Tango off of Chicago. The clever writing is backed up with a clever design. The lighting and sound are really effective and the use of (very) minimal props and costumes fits perfectly with the setup of the production as the most amateur of amateur.

A brave and ballsy cast of three carry the whole thing off really well. Sophie Taylor is the perfect amount of earnest as classicist Cassie, managing to be both unbearable yet still somehow sympathetic (and very funny). Christina Holmbeck as the naive and totally inexperienced Marianna gives the show a bit of humanity and is a stonking Medea (and is also very funny). Iain Gibbons’ Jake is the most broadly comic character and he is, guess what, very funny. His increasingly desperate and ridiculous attempts at ‘accessibility’ are depressingly plausible. And he too is somehow still sympathetic. All together they make for a really effective trio.

The Complete Greek Tragedies (in one hour) is a cracking little show: so fun, so entertaining and so refreshing to see theatre being treated with the irreverence it deserves by some people who clearly completely fucking love it. You can’t see this show anywhere at the moment, but watch out for the next time it’s in town. It’s worth your time.