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Reader rating
Dir: Katie Mitchell.
Cast: Pandora Colin, Kate Duchene, Beth Fitzgerald, Michael Gould, Anastasia Hille, Helena Lymbery, Sinead Matthews, Penelope McGhie, Charlotte Roach, Jonah Russell, Susie Trayling
Description: Don Taylor's contemporary interpretation of Euripides' drama. Here, the story is set in the industrial port of a war-torn city, where women wait to be shipped abroad. Directed by Katie Mitchell.
Trains: Tube/BR: Waterloo 
Phone: 0207452 3000
Website: www.nationaltheatre.org.uk
Casualties of Troy: Kate Duchêne (Hecuba) and her ladies in waiting
I was bewitched by Women of Troy. Once more, and against quite a few odds, Katie Mitchell has recreated a classic Greek tragedy, rendering its images of captivity and terror in terms variously ancient, contemporary and magical.
My first reaction was of surprised disbelief. Bunny Christie's set resembles a modern, square pillared and corrugated iron, two-storey car park, with glass doors and sinister-sounding lifts. Instead of cars, agitated women in black, glittering evening dresses are gathered there. Could Euripides's Trojan Women, set in the brutal aftermath of the rape of Troy in 415 BC, be seriously represented by smart English ladies flaunting their 1940s finery, as if visitors from a superior cocktail party? Was this not silliness incarnate - an example of thoroughly modern bathos?
Such doubts prove misguided. Mitchell also updated her last, remarkable Euripides production - Iphigenia at Aulis - to a period that was roughly 1940s. Such time-switching often works wonders. Kate Duchêne's vocally monotonous but heartfelt Trojan Queen, Hecuba, her daughters and silent chorus of ladies in waiting, have surely been snatched from their grand palace. They are at once casualties of ancient Troy, the Second World War and some nameless terror-hostilities of today. Mitchell represents the physical symptoms of terror, choreographing the women's nervy, restless movements as they drift around like captive, frightened animals, with the same directorial flair that she brought to Iphigenia.
Simon Allen's music enhances the mood of simmering anxiety. The aftermath of war's barbarity bears down upon them. Sinead Matthews's disgracefully unintelligible Cassandra goes mad, lighting fires in waste-paper baskets. Hecuba's daughter-in-law, Anastasia Hille's Andromache, emitting terrible screams and whimpers, is chased around the room by men intent upon killing her toddlerson Astynax, whom Mitchell oddly represents as a doll. Susie Trayling's voluptuous Helen, around whom the women gather as if to tear her apart writhes, pinioned in a chair before being despatched to the waiting ships.
The horror of these timeless war scenes are intermittently interrupted as the women fall back on poignant fantasies of happiness. They dance in studied, formal slow-motion, arms raised at the elbow, to Struan Leslie's beautiful, ghostly choreography and 1940s big band or swing music. The room receives a direct hit and as fire breaks out these women are hauled away to a terrible future. How indelibly haunting is Mitchell's timeless vision of war.
• Until 12 January (020 7452 3000).
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
