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| On stage with Melissa Volpert. |
Euripides, the most subversive of the great Greek dramatists, presented an entirely alternative history of "Helen of Troy" in
Helen (412 B.C.), a play now rarely performed. In
Helen, Euripides' heroine is no wanton seductress, but rather a pious, faithful wife and a hapless victim of Olympian plots who struggles to make the best of a very bad situation. By a trick of the gods, this Helen never travels to Troy at all, but is replaced by a phantom replica on the eve of her kidnapping by Paris. The real Queen Helen is magically transported by Hermes to the far off island of Pharos in a cloud for safekeeping, where she waits out the Trojan War in an ironic celibacy.
Helen picks up the story 17 years later, as the abandoned, middle-aged queen remains stranded on the island, oblivious to her infamy and ignorant of the war's outcome. Euripides' inventive fantasy of mistaken identities and impossible coincidences ensues. Through September 29th, Thursday to Saturday at the magnificent Getty Villa, Malibu.
