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Penthesilea

Royal Lyceum Theatre

Four stars

Blood and roses are two sides of the same coin in cutting edge Amsterdam based director Eline Arbo’s new look at German literary provocateur Heinrich von Kleist’s already taboo busting 1808 play. With Von Kleist having already subverted the myth of Penthesilea, the Amazon wonder woman whose female tribe can only have sex with men they have defeated in battle, Arbo transforms it into a gender bending goth opera, in which guitars and drums are flown in from the heavens on Pascal Leboucq’s industrial set.

 

Arbo’s Dutch language adaptation for Internationaal Theater Amsterdam, presented here with English surtitles, sees the Amazons strike assorted poses beforetheir queen makes a stadium-sized entrance and takes the microphone. With Achilles a handsome heel who does likewise as he and Penthesilea spar, songs are used as weapons of intent before becoming a soundtrack for disaster.

 

This makes for a pretty wild affair, as the cast of nine stalk the stage like rock star pin-ups oozing unspoken prophecies of sex and death from every pore. The tribalist trappings of old school feuds are in the classicist mix, here becoming a genuine matter of life and death. This goes way beyond the live goth-metal rendition of Joy Division’s She’s Lost Control and other songs brought to dark life by the cast and composer/musical director Thijs van Vuure.

 

As Penthesilea, Ilke Paddenburg is a force of nature, squaring up to Jesse Mensah’s Achilles with a mix of soon to be consummated passion and a more deadly intent. This sees them smearing oils over each other one minute, before the emotional chunks  they tear from each other leave the ultimate power couple in a bloodbath of their own making. The endgame of all this is an erotically charged spectacle that lays bare what happens when love is a real life battlefield in devastating fashion.


The Herald, August 6th 2024

 

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