Atropa

Dear friends,
Before Christmas I was supposed to present you a play that I have seen. We did not have time for it and it is probably better this way. It was then too fresh in my mind and I had great difficulties to summarize it. Anyway time fled away and I have worked again on what I have written so I submit it to you. I felt really moved by this play and I found some interesting links or variations with Shakespeare’s Richard III. The first thing I want you to know about it is that it was a very feminist play and that I do not claim neutrality. What I wrote about it is what struck me, what it inspired me, what I found interesting in it. So now for those who want to know more about it, let’s begin.



Atropa or the revenge of peace



Atropa was the last of three plays that formed a cycle about power and violence. It was created by Guy Cassiers and Tom Lanoye who based it on Euripides, Aeschylus, Georges W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and Curzio Malaparte’s texts. It was performed in Dutch with French subtitles. This tragedy goes back to the “mother of every war”, Troy, with a focus on Agamemnon (the only man on stage) and some of the women he wronged in the name of duty or love – Iphigenia, Clytemnestra, Helena, Andromache, Hecuba and Cassandra (yes, the seer one). Actually he is the only man in this play and each of the women will defy him until they eventually defeat him. This story proves that ancient tragedies are still interesting nowadays because they have a universal aim. It was Troy but it could be Baghdad, Manhattan, or England during the War of the Roses that are described.

I do not intend to develop the feminist point much. You just need to know that it is an indictment of women’s oppression and abuse by men throughout History. As I said it could be any war of our time or another. But it is also a war between feminine and masculine principles. Women represent life itself and their voices are those of the cities. Helena especially has two voices: one is her own and the other is Troy. Sometimes they are completely dissociated and sometimes completely mingled reflecting their interwoven fates.


→ Division and unity:

We are confronted to women, to mothers who have lost their children, to wives who have lost their husbands, to daughters whose fathers and brothers have been killed. Their grief divides them so deeply (let us not forget that they are Greeks and Trojans i.e. enemies) that their loneliness seems unavoidable. They have to stand alone faced to the depths of their sorrow, anguish and anger. Still they need a comfort in their distress, someone to acknowledge it, to grant them social recognition, mourning and relief. Denying the reality of their grief would be denying them any importance as human beings capable of feeling and suffering. Helena is the first to proclaim this unity between them although all reject her. Finally they provoke Agamemnon’s defeat by reaching some point of common understanding.

→About the setting:

Just as in Shakespeare’s tragedy language overwhelms everything and makes the setting almost disappear but its remnants are all the more important. There are a screen, some flagstones, a podium (made of flagstones) and a chair.

-The chair shows women’s weakness: they sit down when despair takes away their strength.
-The podium represents Troy’s walls. At the beginning Helena stands alone on it, showing only her back to the audience and holding a mirror. When the city loses, Agamemnon bullies Helena off it and takes her place.
-The reflection of Helena’s face appears on the screen, backstage, enlarged more than ten times its normal size. As she speaks her face seems more and more blurred, misshapen and at last looks like a skull. The screen has something ominously prophetic. It announces the death of both the city and the women in that never-ending war.
-The actors move the flagstones for each important event (a new flagstone is put down for a death, Andromache obsessively piles them up after her son’s murder…).
-Throughout the play a vertical string alights on the stage for each of the women’s deaths until in the last scene Agamemnon stands alone with all these strings, speaks, stammers (“we… we… we”) and suddenly falls silent as the strings all disappear thus emphasizing his absolute abandonment and loneliness.


→A battle for power: violence, language, legitimacy and free will.

Atropa also starts a reflection on what is legitimate, what is worth giving one’s life for.
We are confronted to three different choices in front of violence:
-Iphigenia’s behaviour (she accepts to be sacrificed for honour) which could appear as very noble proves to be no more than indoctrination and lack of judgement.
-Cassandra is willing to fight because for her the only way to defeat Agamemnon is to use the same weapons.
-Hecuba refuses to fight or use violence arguing that it would only continue the cycle of revenge which must be stopped.
The main question is: does violence legitimize violence?
And their problem is about their own responsibility. Here victims though innocent can be guilty if they do not fight fiercely enough… but what way of fighting is legitimate?

Agamemnon needs to legitimize his actions, his deeds and his war but he never takes his responsibility. He justifies them saying that he defends liberty and civilisation against evil and destruction. But he is evil. He embodies evil.
e.g.: he pretends that he has to sacrifice his daughter lest he might appear a coward to his men and get deposed.
e.g.: He dares say to a mother that he understands her, that he has no choice, that she must forgive him because he is only a miserable, helpless man grieved by what he has to do… when what he “has” to do is take her son from her and flung him from the highest tower unto the ground. But Andromache immediately points out his cowardice and asks something that we discussed not so long ago: how can soldiers, how can men who are supposed to be heroes be so frightened by a little baby that only his horrid death can reassure them?


➢ What about free will?

Gods are totally absent from this play and Agamemnon does not even pretend to sacrifice Iphigenia for them. He accuses seers to manipulate religion for political purposes. Nevertheless he always pretends not to have any responsibility in his acts: they were always due to some duty or to fate as if he had no free will. He wants to show himself as a victim, an honest and helpless man and tries to convince his own victims that he is not guilty and that they have to forgive him. The difference with Richard III is that Agamemnon feels the need to be forgiven (he is like those rapers who complain about having been seduced by their victims) while Richard only begs for pardon if it suits his political purpose. In both plays words are perverted.
e.g.: love meaning hate or a rape being called love.
But the women one by one refuse to grant him comfort, power or pardon. They accuse him and refuse to forgive him. Eventually Clytemnestra points out the hollowness of his words and principles and denounces his concern for his own glory and Helena’s being nothing but a pretext.


➢ Language:

Like Richard III it is a play on language with verbal battles to death for power. All the possibilities of language are explored, all its dimensions (words, meanings and music). It is incredible to think that although it was in a foreign language it kept all its strength and still powerfully impressed the audience.
Agamemnon always bellows and Bush’s words in his mouth have a strikingly infuriating effect on spectators. He tries to silence his adversaries by drowning their words under his howls but when Helena stands up against him and starts bellowing he has to use physical violence (throw her off her podium and take her place). Eventually he is himself silenced by their absence. It forbids him to say “we” and he cannot speak anymore. All along the play the women scarcely raise up their voices. They always keep calmer, softer and lower voices than his. Andromache does not cry nor scream when he takes her child. She simply accuses him of cruelty and uses reason when he is driven by madness and superstition. The softness of their voices is much more powerful and threatening. They reach their highest degree of power with a song, which conveys first relief and then an increasing, frightening anguish. This effect is far stronger than Agamemnon’s violent, noisy speeches. At last Clytemnestra refuses his words, takes them from him and defeats him in a dialogue playing with repetitions of “hit” and “the world is vast”. Agamemnon’s language is based on concepts which enable him to create a vision of the world that is not real. Reason is absent from them. He tries exclusively to manipulate feelings and wins only with Iphigenia (she speaks like him). But the other women keep their words sensible and anchored in reality. They speak with reason and yet their feelings are communicated more directly to the audience. While we reject Agamemnon, we sympathize with them. Their language is more constructed, poetic and beautiful. Agamemnon uses a simple syntax in order to create an immediate effect without reflection. He perverts the meaning of words and uses too many symbols. They give back to words their share of reality linking them anew to their meanings. They protect life when Agamemnon only wants destruction and they win by denying him the ability to change the meaning of words or cut the bound between language and reality.


➢ The women’s victory:

The whole tragedy is built on growing tensions and violence. Even the sounds are violent. For each death they hit the flagstones with an axe thus producing an awful, unbearable, piercing and deafening sound. Agamemnon wins as long as he manages to keep everyone (including the audience) in this violence. Its highest degree of intensity is reached when Agamemnon comes back to Clytemnestra who is waiting for him with an axe for then the spectator longs to see his death. But she overcomes this desire of violence and thus wins.
As he had denied death to these women they ask Clytemnestra to kill them or they commit suicide. She accepts out of sympathy not hatred.
Thus they put an end to their grief. Then she wins by her refusal to kill him (for he asked it too). His death would have robbed the others of the value of their deaths. She simply orders him to kill himself if he wants to die. By that she condemns him to live and despair (the opposite of Richard III) just as he had condemned them to live. He cannot stand by his own contrary to Clytemnestra who manages to take her own responsibility (she says “I” not “we”) and have a life of her own. His downfall is her rebirth. The last dialogue brings relief and even laughter (thanks to the play of repetitions with “you hit”). It brings back peacefulness making violence useless and unnecessary. The cycle of violence and revenge is ended.
Actually this tragedy is a beautiful message of hope.





Now do not hesitate in asking me questions if it is not complete or clear enough.