Company TheatreRheo is dedicated to fusing ‘the words ‘contemporary’ and ‘classical’ to create an experience’, and it certainly lives up to the high standards it’s set itself in their interpretation of Sophocles’ play Ajax.
Using synchronised movement and harmonies, the actors create tribal rhythms tinged with folky trills that echo another era.
Ajax is a hero of the Greek mythology, who desires to murder his commanders but is tricked by the gods into slaughtering a herd of animals instead; the consequences of his actions are agonisingly shameful. In TheatreRheo’s version, two actors multi-role the characters in Sophocles’ original, most impressively, the chorus segments. Using synchronised movement and harmonies, the actors create tribal rhythms tinged with folky trills that echo another era.
The costumes are inventively basic, earthy colours with splashes of fur and elastic emulate something animal in the characters and the rawness of their emotions. The physicality too is ferocious, yet battles with a tension extended through to the very fingertips and toes of the actors bodies as if fighting their transformations. It’s possible to hear the actors breathing in unison as they perfectly synchronise or, more challengingly, counter one another by slowing down or attempting to drown out the other; they are the essence of an ensemble intensified in the form of a duet. Both of them do daring, unnatural things with their bodies that somehow look beautiful and entrance the audience; it’s as if they’re possessed.
Mimi Findlay is most impressive as Ajax, and Susanna Hook as Ajax’s wife Tecmessa. Findlay has a suitably masculine presence and Ajax’s pain seems to come from within the depths of her ribcage, shaking with anger and rough in tone. In contrast, Hook’s Tecmessa has a balance of vulnerability in her body that interplays with the steadfast determination of her monologue, as she begs Ajax not to leave her and her son or else they will be lost to slavery.
The pace is unpredictable, yet this is something of a hindrance to an audience without any background of greek theatre or mythology. TheatreRheo have created something stunning, but created something which places physicality at the forefront of the devising process, not the audience.
