The Furies

The Furies are so old they make the Norse gods look like a twinkle in a caveman's eye: but in Ethrael Theatre's new musical adaptation of Aeschylus's play, they're doing their best at not going gentle into the Greek night. 

This student theatre company try their hardest to terrify with a gothed out red lighting scheme, draping the tiny womb-like theatre in black and red velvet. The female chorus are stronger on flailing, moaning lustful aggression than on violence: but it's still enough to terrify priggish young Orestes. They're pursuing him to punish him for murdering his mother Clytemnestra, in revenge for her murder of his father King Agamemnon, after he sacrificed their daughter Iphigenia. But these elaborate nuances don't trouble the Furies – or at least, not until the goddess Athena imposes order on their vigilante ways by introducing trial by jury.

Director Leo Mylonadis emphasises physicality over the periodically stilted delivery of the text, which isn't helped by a translation that's wedded a little too closely to the Greek original. But the production's live violin soundtrack and close vocal harmonies do a a lot to smooth over its cracks, creating a shimmering texture of real beauty.

Ethrael Theatre is, as the name suggests, strong on the ethereal approach of draperies and pretty dancing that's traditionally associated with adapting the Ancients. Artful writhing aside, there's not much of the gut-wrenching horror that killed an audience member at the play's first ever performance stone dead. But these toothless old gods still have the power to charm.