Phaedra: Sex, Death and Terrible Restaurant Management
Mixing up versions of Euripides, Seneca and Racine, Simon Stone’s National Theatre staging of Greek myth just can’t decide whether Phaedra is anti-hero, victim or villain, or something more frivolous like a comedy version of La Ronde.
In the original version an apparently virtuous wife fancies her step-son, he rejects her and she tells a terrible lie about him to her husband, resulting in his horrific death. In this version Helen (of Troy?) aka Freya (Janet McTeer) is a powerful, charismatic politician pulsing with post-menopausal desire. In her super cool elite family, with more hardcore swears than a David Hare play, her children address her and her husband by their first names, no-one cooks (classic Deliveroo line!) and Helen indulges in some frankly creepy power play behaviour with her son-in-law, Eric (John Macmillan), (right before her daughter’s and husband’s eyes).
There’s a lot going on here, but never fully explored. Helen’s very amusing husband Hugo (Paul Chahidi) is an Iranian asylum seeker, but Helen’s lost love affair is set in…Morocco. But the play is clearly an attack on Iranian politics and Western hippy colonisers who took what they wanted when they wanted it. In a nice naturalistic touch, everyone talks over everyone else…without listening. At some points there were three conversations going on at once! Until the mysterious Sofiane (Assaad Bouab) turns up. He is the son of her lost…and dead…Moroccan folk singer lover from the 1970s — what does he want? Is he a haunting, out for knowledge, or revenge?
None of the above, sadly, as it turns out. Intercut with the scenes (and there are scenes), is a narrative of Sofiane’s father explaining himself. We wonder - has Sofiane has been listening to these, for who knows how long? As an adult as he was meant to or did he begin as an angry small boy? He is, (and this is never explored in the play), one deeply traumatised, betrayed small boy — he saw and heard his father and Helen together, saw the impact of his father’s abandonment and sudden death on his mother and now seeks to replicate his father’s relationship with Helen. The creepiness of this (and in Helen’s willingness to jump into an affair with her lover’s son — probably because he reminds her of the past) is never explored. The English it seems, the play suggests, are willing to talk graphically about physical sex — but still very much stiff upper lipped about emotional intimacy.
Only there is a problem — Helen’s daughter, romantically or dangerously named Isolde (Mackenzie Davis) fancies Sofiane too, and reality comes through as Sofiane struggles with all the women in the family wanting him. What does he want? Is he more than just a sex object for all these Western women? As an illegal asylum seeker squatting in office blocks, (unknown to Helen or conveniently overlooked for how he’s making her feel), he chooses Helen’s daughter, and faces a terrible revenge from rejected Helen — who uses her power against him, and regrets it.
The second half of the play is much stronger as Helen and Hugo face each other out over where flowers should go on the table at her birthday celebration (minutely highlighting the fractures in their marriage); Helen’s daughter abruptly reveals her pregnancy (by Sofiane) infront of everyone; the nice guy son-in-law destroys the restaurant — not because he wants to, but because it’s expected of him — he’s thoroughly a nice guy throughout — and Phaedra erupts into noisy, attention seeking self-pity and grief.
For all it’s previous naturalism, the restaurant features the worst hospitality manager in the world — hiding and looking on as guests abuse each other (and the very, very expensive champagne) and other diners quiet tete-a-tetes, merely popping into to rescue a fallen napkin. I hear the sound of crashing Michelin stars. In real life the police would have been called or the party (no matter their status) asked to leave forthwith?
Phaedra loses her political career due to all her shenanigans, the crumbling set in motion by her friend and colleague, and is most powerfully is confronted by Sofiane’s wife, facing up to her responsibilities at long last. Unexplored, but bubbling away, is the selfishness of adults, the irresponsibility of people in and with power — parents who aren’t parenting, but behaving more like children; adult who lack self-control and the emotional management and consideration which makes adults ‘adult’. (Even the way that Phaedra speaks to her high functioning super sweary teenage son is suspect). Unless this is too middle class manners comedy for you, it does go all gory Greek tragedy at the end — with several gasp out loud moments along the way. Aside from that, I’m not sure that it give us any sympathy for Phaedra — shown as greedy, gluttonous, selfish, self-indulgent, a misuser of power and a coverer of truth. Polar opposite of the very upright and appropriate Phaedra in her original status.
In all honesty, this is the minor characters play — the nice son-in-law who longs for a child with his wife and even nobly hides his pain and hurt when she ends their marriage, knowing his own dullness and failure and struggling to emotionally connect with his wife in their shared grief over their lack of children; Hugo’s in his monologues, his humour, his love for his hurting silent son, his kindness in group hugs and his reclamation of his culture, name and his integrity (though he does help his wife look for Sofiane in Morocco as her interpreter); Sofiane’s wife — the power of her voice, finally — the emotional connection; her humanity; the integrity of their relationship and her furious cursing of Phaedra were incredible.
Not explored, though a key theme, was the idea of the past as a genetic legacy — are we doomed to repeat the patterns of the past and our parents, or can we do something differently? If so, how? Is forgiveness enough, or do we need reconciliation or reparations? Is it something we can do? We never really get to the heart of why Sofiane does what he does — is he a destroyer of homes and family, or trying to understand his father by replicating his behaviour entirely, or just wanting what his father had? Is he as greedy and all consuming as Phaedra? Or does he feel like he failed as a father, just as his own father did? Is he actually on the run from himself and his mistakes? This play never really gets to the heart of why everyone in this play is so self-destructive.
Janet McTeer is magnificent; however, although this production resembles Ruth Wilson’s The Human Voice (post-modernist take, box of a set — a spinning glass box in this case, audience as voyeurs, high stylisation), we never really emotionally connect with what is going on. The second half is much more emotionally gripping, and Sofiane’s wife’s voice entirely legitimate; in jarring contrast, due to setting itself up as an elitist comedy of manners, when characters reveal moments of deep pain, much of the audience laughed. What was meant to be moving and touch us has become ridiculous. Such as the daughter’s doctors and nurses story with her childhood friend — what does it mean to be really seen? (Again this was physical rather than emotional — we are hiding the true emotional parts of ourselves according to this play, although excessive emotions and physical acts may slosh around on show). And amidst all the sniggering, this was meant to be a tragedy.
Hidden in the midst was the cultural drama of Helen’s friend and colleague, Omolara (Akiya Henry). She was established as a Christian early on and could have been used really powerfully as a moral foil to all the elite excesses going on around her, someone with actual integrity and real feelings. But I feel that the dramatist has never met a real Christian, as although she started out well, challenging Phaedra’s ethics and morality — very soon she’d declared that she didn’t believe in ‘sin’ and was David Haring (hardcore swearing) along with everyone else. (Though she felt conflicted about it, and used it as part of her truth telling to Helen). Yet in revealing her story of fostering and a loving family, her identity came very much from her faith, from knowing that she was chosen, special, loved by a heavenly Father as much as an earthly one. If only she’d been allowed to be more Antigone rather than just another failing church-goer, or the only character who acknowledged their moral failings, their weaknesses and their need for someone outside themselves, that they couldn’t do it alone. Though her naff faith was nicely called out by Sofiane! who ironically had no faith other than being culturally Muslim. Character beliefs and how they drive them (as in the original Phaedra story) could have been more strongly explored here — this is the main problem, lots of action but no depth. Did Helen believe in love, or merely her right to do what she wanted when she wanted at everyone else’s expense?
Hinted at too was culture — Sofiane’s father could only be acceptable with Helen as his entry into high partying, decadent, influential society and musical fame; Sofiane had to pretend to go on holiday to avoid prison for his political protests and expressed opinions; Helen’s daughter leant to mask who she was — to not be seen as a woman, presumably avoiding competition and comparison with her mother; Helen’s friend forgot how to speak Yoruba; Hugo was renamed in his new adopted society (and because no-one could pronounce it, leading to confusion over his role — was he really the barman?) and Helen not being able to truly understand the culture she was in — letting her lover and then Hugo do the hard work of translation for her, hoping that French would be enough…and seeing it as an experience, not a place and a people. Although cultural tropes were thrown around, none of these were explored deeply — and again in comparison to Ruth Wilson’s The Human Voice, lacked true emotional connection. We looked into the spinning glass box and saw surface — until Sofiane’s wife was shouting to be in let in, for him to let her be his partner, to stop running from pain and mourn their lost son with her, together. Ethically what does it mean to be true selves if those selves cause harm to others? Cue lots of emotional hand wringing, but again another theme which could have been covered more profoundly.
Responsibility and guilt too are skimmed over, as was what it means to be a mother. Repeatedly we’re told that Helen is a murderer, a destroyer of marriage and family (contracted with the fathers in the play), and yet I never really connected to her crimes. It was more like being told something third hand than emotionally impacting with this — I just didn’t believe it. We only had Sofiane vs Helen’s narratives to go by — and the full force of Sofiane's wife’s vengeance at the end? Yet, at no point, did the play explore redemption? If the Christian friend doesn’t believe in sin, how about forgiveness? For Sofiane, prayer comforts him (although he doesn’t seem to believe in God) — are all the characters trying to find redemption in rituals and routines, in outwardly correct behaviours (even elite misbehaviour or the complete pursuit of self)? Was Helen a sacrificial redemption at the end or merely a kind of justice payment? Justice didn’t get a look-in, although injustice was frequently pointed out. Again a moral/ethical pivot character was needed — which perhaps Sofianne or Omolara were meant to do, but were weakly underwritten.
Worth watching for characters wandering about in a field in a glass box, and then mountainous snow in a box!!! It’s all very The Forgiven in snow. It is a spectacle, but lacks emotional complexity — the play is powerful, but not where it could and should have been. Probably the first play I’ve seen where male infertility (and grief at it) is considered seriously too.
