Electra at the Old Vic

On the 8th October 2014 at the Old Vic theatre in London. The play was originally written by Sophocles and was adapted for this performance.

Without having seen Electra before it is hard to compare and contrast the production with another however with my knowledge of Greek theatre I was able to understand a few variable that were similar, for example the tragedy which the play is based on and the events which happen in it are typically classical Greek aspects.

Back in Greek times, plays were performed in Amphitheatres, an outside seating area which half surrounded the staging, but were designed to allow massive audiences. In the Old Vic performance we were completely surround the stage which I presume was the intention to fit more audiences in per performance.

An advantage of using the theatre space as ‘in-the round’ is that it breaks down the fourth wall which means the audience and the character can connect more easily making the characters more relatable and hopefully ensuring the audience understands the performance better.

 

The costumes in the performance were Greek but very over exaggerated Greek costumes this could have been used to make the era the play was set in more obvious or help the illusion of the story more powerful.

In conclude I feel like the performance contained great acting skills and techniques but the verbal presenting of the lines were dull and plain, excluding the main Electra character which varied her voice levels and managed to keep the audiences attention throughout her long monologue line speeches. There were many aspects of the piece which did feel pointless to add and made for me as an audience member distracted from the made plot and illusion the performance was creating. The lighting steered towards a more Greek way of theatre as the lighting at times represented the colour and feel of sunlight and the lighting changed to help the scenes emotion, dim light was used for example at times when Electra was on her own speaking, this helped show how she felt like she was isolated and alone in the situations which she faces especially after receiving the news of her brother's death. The lighting again through the scene when the Orestes reveals himself as being alive is bright and happy which represents hope and a new beginning almost, the lighting I felt was a small but powerful feature which really brought the piece together and helped show great variation between scenes and characters emotions.