Trojan Women Review Greek Tragedy Beautifully Interwoven With Korean Tradition
This lyrical work comes from several great traditions: ancient Greek drama, Korean pansori (in which the singer accompanies the drums), blues, and jazz. It adds a pop-concert visual at times, and the effect, which could easily be patchwork, sparkles from start to finish.
Director Wong Keng Sen transforms Euripides' tragedy into art like this one, an example of how a culture can own ancient Greek myths.
This super production from Korea's National Changgeuk has a high-octane look and sound that elegantly explores the fall of Troy from a female perspective. From queens and nobles to slaves and concubines, war trophies and war lambs, she describes the range of emotions and power dynamics among these widows and daughters whose identities change at their feet after the war.
Music director and composer Jung Jae-il, K-pop producer and pansori master Ahn Suk-san, who scored the Oscar-winning film Parasite, create an a cappella vocal journey, a bold fusion of modern and ancient sounds. Stories with modern rhythms.
With its visceral quality, the pansori chant lends itself well to the story's lament: some notes sound like drawn-out moans, wails, and wails. Written by Bae Sam-sik, whose book is poetic yet dreamy and intense, this is not a women of fear or sadness. A chorus of eight women reveals their inner strength and transforms their emotional reactions from fear to grit and realism.
Cassandra (Ie Soo-yeon) is often portrayed as a distracted victim, displaying an air of quiet vengeance before being dragged off to become Agamemnon's concubine. Hecuba (Kim Geum Mi) is horrified and enraged by the suffering of women at the hands of men in war.
A mother's love and loss is further represented in Andromache's (Kim Mi-jin) terrible order to kill her own child. "One minute," he said, addressing Astyanax with painful tenderness. Helen, the outsider played by actor Kim Joon-soo, is a bold casting that pays off. He's weird and hated by everyone, but Jun-su shows his natural greed.
Cho Myung Hee's monochromatic white dress goes up the stairs as if these women were already in the afterlife. Tsunami explosions of light and color reveal the danger around them (lighting by Scott Zielinski and video design by Austin Switzer) in a production that is breathtaking in its spectacle, dramatically epic and truly tragic.
This article was last updated on August 12, 2023. The previous version mistakenly listed performer Kim Jun-soo as "pop star Kim Jun-soo," who played Helen in previous productions of Trojan Woman.
