INSPIRATION can all too often be a will o'the wisp, leading one on an erratic course into the middle of a bog. Kathleen Desmond obviously thought that the ancient Greek House of Atreus could transfer meaning fully to modern Belfast, blood calling for blood down the generations. If there are parallels, how ever, she has failed to make them credible in Electra Remaking The Myth.
Her Electra, renamed Ellie McAleese, is a Provo, and in this account something of a psychopath who interrogates and tortures informers. She is estranged from her Protestant mother who, she believes, left and then murdered her father when she was a child. Ellie's brother Ollie - unfortunate diminutives - has been reared in America, and is on a visit home to get to know his family. In a few weeks he is converted to her politics.
The scenario soon becomes a turgid mix of republican polemics and family traumas. Unless there is going to be a cop out, we know where the latter are heading, and, indeed, Ollie/Orestes illogically murders Cynthia/Clytemnestra at Ellie's bidding, hardly a blow for republicanism. The play falls heavily between its two stools.
Director Caroline Lynch cannot do much to instill verisimilitude into the action, but gets good, naturalistic performances - from the stronger players with the meatier parts . . . These include Abbie Spallen, Leo Martin, Paddy Rocks and John Lawlor, who manage to inject some vitality into their one dimensional roles.
