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Hecuba
Hecuba
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Author: Timberlake Wertenbaker Publisher: Dramatic Publishing Format: Softcover # of Pages: 57 Pub. Date: 1996 ISBN-10: 0871296306 ISBN-13: 9780871296306
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About the Play:
Hecuba is a full-length drama translated by Timberlake
Wertenbaker from Euripedes' ancient Greek text. The tragedy of
the former Queen of Troy, who, when exiled, plots to destroy all
those who attempted to destroy her and her people. An elegant and
fierce rendering of the classical theatre's most powerful tragedy of
woman.
Euripides took up the hapless Queen of Troy as subject of a play
that, until the 19th century, was one of his most popular. Set in the
aftermath of the Trojan War, Hecuba, the widow of King Priam finds
herself in the land of Thrace – her world turned upside down.
Having watched the rape and pillage of Troy, Hecuba learns that she
must sacrifice her daughter to the spirit of Achilles and that her
youngest son has been murdered by the man who was meant to protect
him. A slave of the Greeks, pursued by injustice she seeks a gruesome
and terrible revenge.
As the San Jose Mercury News describes it, "Hecuba,
the story of a noble spirit ravaged beyond redemption, is one of the
first works of literature to look unsparingly at the aftermath of
war. This was Euripides' great theme: neither gods nor an abstraction
called fate, but we ourselves cause our own sorrows and have the
means to redeem our lives. After the fall of Troy, Hecuba, now
enslaved ... is told her daughter Polyxena must be sacrificed to
appease the ghost of Achilles and to assure fair winds for the Greek
fleet's return home. Wrenched to the breaking point, she is then
driven over the edge when the body of her youngest son, Polydorus,
washes up on the shore. He had been sent away for safekeeping to ...
Polymestor. Hecuba takes revenge, blinding Polymestor and
slaughtering his two young sons. In Hecuba, everything happens
because of 'ananke,' conventionally translated as necessity. In this
play, there are no impersonal gods dealing the tragic strokes that
lash Hecuba into madness; instead, she is brought low by politics,
expediency and greed. Many modernized versions of classic plays aim
for timelessness; this one achieves it. Its people could be any
refugees appealing to any conquerors for basic human rights."
Hecuba premiered in 1995 at American Conservatory Theater
(commonly called ACT) in San Francisco, with Academy Award winner
Olympia Dukakis in the title role. The radio première of
Wertenbaker's adaptation was broadcast in 2001 on BBC Radio 3.
Cast: 2 women, 4 men (chorus)
About the Playwright:
Timberlake Wertenbaker is a British playwright, screenplay
writer, and translator, best known for her widely produced play Our
Country's Good. Her background is as cosmopolitan as that of the
variety of characters in her plays. She was born in the United States
in 1951, and grew up in America and the French Basque region. She
graduated from St. John's College in 1966, worked as a writer in New
York, and taught French in Greece. In 1970 she moved to London where
she began writing plays and working with several small theatre
companies. Timberlake Wertenbaker is a British playwright who grew up
in the Basque Country of France. She was Resident Writer for the
Royal Court Theatre (1984-5).
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