Dundee Rep Four stars In a bombed-out wasteland, the body laid out among the rubble looks set to live on as the clamour of warfare sounds out inbetween the voices of contemporary apologists for war. It's the dead that speak first, however, as the slain Polydorus comes crawling from the wreckage in Amanda Gaughan's up close and personal production of Frank McGuinness' pared down version of Euripides' post Trojan War anti-conflict classic. It's the image of the dead that stand out overall, in fact, as Irene Macdougall's electrifying Hecuba rises up against those who sacrificed her daughter Polyxena and murdered her son in a tit for tat revenge killing that will either provoke further reprisals or else end all wars forever. While history has shown how things have actually worked out in that respect time and again, Gaughan goes for the jugular, with the actors unleashed onto Leila Kalbassi's broken breeze-block styled set like a battered nation in
An archive of arts writing by Neil Cooper. Effete No Obstacle.