Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Brie Larson’s Elektra strides on to the barren stage, sporting a buzz-cut and a Bikini Kill T-shirt, seizes a microphone and begins her lament. “I will not let go this man or this mourning,” she declares vehemently, pacing the revolve as it spins her in circles, spitting her contempt for her mother (Clytemnestra) and stepfather (Aegisthus) and raging at the world that has left her, a woman, unable to avenge the death of her beloved father, Agamemnon.A chorus of women plead with her — “why let grief eat you alive?” they sing — and her sister Chrysothemis (Marième Diouf) picks her way through the dark to reason with her. But Elektra is a woman beyond reason, hammered into extremis by her hurt, and this is her world as imagined by director Daniel Fish: an uncompromising production for an uncompromising character.It’s the second bold attempt on the London stage this week to return afresh to Sophocles, to rediscover his work in the light of our own fractured world, to meet ancient Greek theatre practice with contemporary equivalents. And, as with the Old Vic’s Oedipus — which features another Hollywood star, Rami Malek, in the title role — it proves only fitfully successful. Here, underneath a pile-up of ideas, the story itself gets buried.The vision is raw and austere, with Elektra stalking the stage, mic in hand, punching out her words, sometimes with bitter wit, like a sardonic, alienated punk performer at a gig or poetry slam. Her rage and sense of impotence speak for many in today’s world: the word “no” bursts out in singsong every time she utters it (a response, perhaps, to the character’s strange screams in the original); she reports her mother’s words, contemptuously, through a distorted mic. It’s a bruising, bruised performance and Larson, making her West End debut, has on her side poet Anne Carson’s diamond-sharp translation: “Alone, the whole poised force of my life is nothing against this.” The chorus too are great, mournful in silk, expressing their concern in composer Ted Hearne’s eerie, haunting harmonies.But the difficulty with extremity in drama is that, over time, it produces diminishing returns. Elektra is an unyielding character, but here her monomania proves increasingly alienating rather than inviting understanding, feeling or pity. And while there’s sense in trapping us in her head and giving her control of the narrative, it means the other characters, given no microphones, are banished to the sidelines and fight to achieve definition or even to be heard. The play’s narrative and its debate about justice are lost; in one key exchange a character stands upstage, back to the audience, becoming completely inaudible.Stockard Channing’s dignified Clytemnestra explains that Agamemnon sacrificed Elektra’s sister, Iphigenia, but this barely registers — not only with Elektra, but in the staging. If you don’t know the back-story you’d struggle to grasp it. This detracts from the show’s power, as does the fact that Elektra’s brother Orestes (Patrick Vaill) is skimpily delineated. The supporting cast, fine actors all, look marooned. Meanwhile, Fish makes some baffling decisions — at one point drenching the stage in dry ice so that not only can we not hear the dialogue, we can’t see the speakers either, or suspending a blimp over the stage. It’s a study in trauma, rage, alienation, but a bit like its central character, it gets trapped in its own world.★★★☆☆To April 12, elektraplay.com
