Current Performances

Listings and reviews of current and forthcoming performances of ancient drama

Listings are published in reverse order of date of first night.*


Medea

8th - 11th July 2009
Contact Theatre, Oxford Rd, Manchester, M15 6JA, UK
Box office: 0161 274 0600.
Website: www.contact-theatre.org

Medea is a co-production between Contact and Passion Productions. Anchored in the same themes of love, pain and hatred the action has been transported from the ancient streets of Corinth to a south Manchester council estate. Medea, now an ordinary woman struggling to bring up her children, has just discovered Jason, her lover, has left her for another woman. Tortured by her seething passion, isolated by her position and crushed by the betrayal Medea rages against her fate... before plotting the ultimate, unthinkable revenge.

For more information, please email: jamesstanley AT contact-theatre.org

Ajax

26th May - 25th July 2009
Riverside studios, Hammersmith, London, UK
Box office: 020 8237 1111
Website: www.riversidestudios.co.uk

Love and Madness Ensembles presents Ajax, a play that centres on the fate of the warrier following the end of the Trojan Wars. After the death of Achilles, Ajax is enraged to find that Odysseus has been awarded Achilles arms and armour instead of him and vows vengeance on the Greek Leaders who he believes have disgraced him. Tricked by the Goddess Athena, he slaughters a herd of cattle, believing them to be his commanding officers. Upon coming to his senses he is horrified at his actions and decides his only way forward is to take his own life. Director, Jack Shepherd has reset this moving story of a great warrior's downfall amongst the killing fields and insanity of the First World War.


Homer's Iliad: Book One

31st March - 25th April 2009
Lucille Lortel Theatre, New York, USA
Box office: 001 212 279 4200
Website: www.aquilatheatre.com

There can be no doubt that Homer's epic story of Achilles and the Trojan war is one of the greatest works in world literature. A disparate group of soldiers and refugees, take refuge from a savage war and find solace and humanity in Homer's epic tale. Nine years after the start of the Trojan War, the Greeks are still unable to defeat their enemy. Agamemnon, the commander clashes with the best warrior, Achilles over the division of war-prizes and is forced to give back the girl Chryseis to her father after Apollo sends a terrible plague. Agamemnon claims Achilles' war-prize Briseis to save face and the furious Achilles withdraws from the fighting and asks the Gods to turn the war against the Greeks.


Euripides' Hippolytus by Timberlake Wertenbaker

24th - 28th February 2009
Rivrside Studios, London, UK
Box office: 020 8237 1111
Website: www.riversidestudios.co.uk

3rd - 7th March 2009
Greenwich Theatre, London
Box office: 020 8858 7755
Website: www.greenwichtheatre.org.uk

10th - 14th March 2009
OFS Studio, Oxford
Box office: 0844 844 0662
Website: www.ofsstudio.org.uk

X