The Oresteia Reviews: the performances are stellar, but critics are divided on the creative elements

“A brilliant profaning of an almost sacred text.”

“Thrillingly stripped back.”

“The play happens in a glass cube, an opulent modernist mansion in miniature from Lizzie Clachan – concrete walls, chrome-edged recliners – lit from within by Nick Schlieper, turning each scene into a modern Gothic tableau”

“Stone’s adaptation homes in on the play as a cluster of family murders – matricide, suicide, a couple of other -icides – each one a stacked domino in a cascade of revenge that seems never to end.”

“It’s a joy to see Mary-Louise Parker bring her ironic half-smile to Monty, and even more so to watch her descent into grief and bitterness and finally a dead-eyed despair.””

“It is a powerful mapping of the new play onto the old one.”

“No deus ex machinas here. It’s all too painfully human, a reminder that we’re the sowers of all this violence, and the reapers too.”

“Reimagined for the 21st century with verve and ingenuity.”

“It's uncomfortable, agonisingly drawn out, and brilliant.”

“No one acts as you'd expect them to: there are incestuous caresses and uneasy cruelties. This wealthy clan's language is psychological violence, long before the first physical blows land.”

“Designer Lizzie Clachan's masterpiece of a set comes into its own. This precisely-imagined cube contains a whole house on two floors. At heightened moments it slowly revolves so that we can glimpse dagger-wielding murders or red-stained victims as they run through this perfect doll's house world, filling it with horror.”

“Arguably, there's something a little too easy about the play's ultimate reliance on madness to explain this story's twisted direction.”

“Miraculously, its three-and-a-half-hour runtime never feels long, thanks to two intervals and an endless stock of boxset-worthy twists and shifts of mood.”

“It has to be said that The Oresteia is in many ways the apotheosis of Stone’s style, an expansive adaption of the Greek legend about the fall of the house of Agamemnon that is trashy as hell and yet relentlessly gripping, its three-and-a-half hours whizzing by.”

“A non-linear structure maximises shock value in a way that clearly takes a leaf or two from the world of true crime podcasts.”

“The non-linear structure works a treat and Lizzie Clachan’s revolving house set is great for the pacing, with scenes set up in the side of the house we can’t see before it spins around.”

“And Stone’s characters are by and large enjoyable.”

“But [Sheehy’s] a delight either way, a vibrant cocktail of privilege and inferiority complex. US star Parker teeters on the cusp of panto villain but she’s tremendously good at it; with a couple of gloriously scenery-chewing monologues.”

“It’s almost four hours of electrifying spectacle, yet Stone’s all-out vision at times ends up diminishing rather than enhancing his source material.”

“It’s a monumental performance from the House of the Dragon star which argues that Augie’s retributive psychopathy is indivisible from an inherited cultural sickness that goes as far back as the Crusades and takes in recent conflicts in Syria, Ukraine and Afghanistan.”

“Often, there is too thin a line between the default mode of excoriating black wit and glib farce. Some of the more political declamations feel like mini-lectures.”

“Archie Madekwe’s Lorenzo, quietly in love with Augie and who offers the evening’s only real glimpse of humanity.”

“Acclaimed Australian writer-director Simon Stone brings his signature style to the timeless story of a family destroyed by an obsessive pursuit of revenge”

“Mary-Louise Parker relishes this role [of Montie], starting off stewing in passive aggression before going fully unhinged, avenging fury mode on a potent cocktail of drugs and unprocessed grief.”

“The entire cast is fully committed, and its characters’ relationships feel meaty and richly drawn, offering unexpected twists on their classical counterparts.”

“But elsewhere the production feels unsteady.”

“Designer Lizzie Clachan provides an ominous, multi-storey set that traps the characters inside a cube of concrete and glass. It is a sort of brutalist human zoo, where we observe the family’s death-spiral through massive windows and sliding screen doors.”

“Stone’s commitment to capturing the realistic rhythms of conversation leads to constantly overlapping dialogue and argumentative interruptions that further garble his text.”

“They are so privileged that they speak of Bollinger as a cooking wine, and live in a house that has the corporate look of an upmarket hotel chain.”

“The story shuttles back and forth in time, from pre-Brexit Britain to pandemic days and the present. The reverse storytelling still, astonishingly, manages to sustain tension and grip.”

“The action holds you, but the frenetic plotting does not leave much room for the psychological element.”

“On Lizzie Clachan’s dazzling set, we see the family inside their revolving home, rooms exposed, fugitive acts laid bare. It is a highly effective use of Stone’s hallmark glass-box.”

“[Stone’s] social satire is on point too, but seems almost on the verge of sending this ridiculously entitled family up, and there is a jittering humour alongside the tragedy.”