To The Elephant

Shakespeare’s blistering Trojan War story gets a dystopian treatment in To The Elephant’s stripped back production, giving a 75 minute account of this rarely performed play. The rhetorical set pieces are distilled so that the story forges ahead to its destined conclusion.

Gossip and vanity drive the action and the reputations of its great stars - Helen, Paris, Hector, Achilles, Agamemnon – don’t fare so well under the microscope. This production brings them up close and very personal, offering a searing insight into the vanity and depravity of war.

To The Elephant brings an irrepressibly modern thrust to the play as celebrity war-mongering again turns the world’s eyes to the Aegean Sea and beyond, to stalemate, carnage and the personal acts that precipitate general destruction.

John O’Hara's (Jethro Tull) music both sets the scene and subtly underscores, Ben O’Grady’s lighting searches out the light and shade in the unique space at The Rose Playhouse.