Tag Archives: Turkey

Nov 18

Emotional Complexity on a Beige Stage: THE TROJAN WOMEN

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trojan ladiesPresented by Theatre@First
Written by Euripides
Translated by Edith Hamilton
Directed by J. Deschene

Nov. 14-22, 2014
Unity Church of Somerville
Somerville, MA
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Review by Kitty Drexel
In the interest of full disclosure and transparency, I did audition for this play and was not cast. It is my firm belief that only a narcissistic ass would allow this to taint their review.

 

“Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”

― Margaret Atwood

(Somerville, MA) The Trojan Women was first produced in 415 BCE but might as well have been written last year. In it, the women of Troy (now Turkey) are grieving over their beloved fallen city, and the men who have died defending the city from the Greeks. Euripides so captured the trauma of a country torn by war, that his play has been made into a very famous 1971 film (featuring the alluring Katharine Hepburn as Hecuba, a brave and unusual choice) and has survived several adaptations and manipulations. The translation by Edith Hamilton remains the most popular for staging. The movie featuring Hepburn, Irene Papas, and Vanessa Redgrave, etc. is a classic. Continue reading →

Mar 25

‘Deported’ dreams fragrant hope

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Bobbie Steinbach and Jeanine Kane, photo credit: Boston Playwrights' Theatre

Deported, A Dream Play by Joyce Van Dyke, Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, Modern Theatre at Suffolk University, 3/8/12-4/1/12, http://www.bu.edu/bpt/.

Reviewed by Becca Kidwell

(Boston, MA) An American rose does not smell as sweet as an Armenian rose; that’s what Joyce Van Dyke tells us.  The Armenian-American culture is extremely prevalent in the Metro Boston area, particularly in Watertown where the Armenian Library and Museum is located, and has been trying to get the world to recognize the genocide in Armenia from 1915, when there were several massacres.  “Armenian men were rounded up and killed.  Then the women and children were ‘deported’ on a death march through the desert,” Van Dyke writes in the program.  And as the hundredth anniversary approaches, the genocide is still denied by Turkey, but Van Dyke writes of the hope of recognition and reconciliation in the near future. Continue reading →