Agamemnon by Aeschylus

UCL Department of Greek and Latin, in association with the Bloomsbury Theatre, presents the Agamemnon of Aeschylus.

An amateur production.

Aeschylus' Agamemnon is the first play of a trilogy (the famous Oresteia), performed originally in the ancient theatre of Dionysus in 458 BC.

A king warrior returns home victorious after 10 years of absence at the Trojan War. His queen greets him warmly; at the same time, she is plotting his death. A young prophetess, booty of the war, makes the stage reverberate with her revelations and forebodings, before she herself walks willingly to her death at the hands of the queen. The glorious homecoming turns into the initiating moment of a blood feud to be resolved only at the ending of the Eumenides, the third and last play of the trilogy.

This is a play which introduces us to the story of one of the most infamous families of antiquity: the Atreidai; the adventures of a household haunted by black Furies, filled with murders, horrible crimes, and slaughtered children. As the tale of the doomed house unfolds, and as Agamemnon is progressively lured inside its gates to be murdered, we the spectators are also 'lured' into an interplay of multiple conflicts and tensions; male versus female, divine versus human, victimhood versus guilt, justice versus vengeance. Throughout, words and action splendidly co-operate to bring out the powerful effect of what has often been thought of as the richest and most tightly-structured artefact of ancient theatrical production.

Tickets £9, Concessions £6