Phèdre

In the wake of high profile criminal cases such as the recent trial of Josef Fritzl, a man who serially raped his own daughter and begot her children, the dusty 17th century tragedy of a queen in love with her stepson has lost most of its shock effect. This is not to say that Nicholas Hytner’s adaptation of Racine’s Phèdre is a disappointment, rather, Hytner makes a shrewd directorial choice to modernise the play and tackle it instead as a psychodrama.

Using Ted Hughes’ translation that purges Racine’s text of its poetic exuberance, Hytner re-presents the play without visual pomp. Bob Crowley’s stunning, minimalist set, including Troezen’s indoor, cave-like court on one side and a panorama of blue sky on the other, fits Hytner’s approach. After all, for Hytner’s production, the set serves as an abstract space where desires are conscripted and made to interact with one another.

Incestuous desire is, obviously, not Hytner’s focus. It is those suffering from it that matter. Phèdre’s infatuation for stepson Hippolytus and Hippolytus’s love for African-princess-turned-political-criminal Aricia are equally unlawful and not declared until Theseus’s reported demise stirs up the question of succession. ‘Love’ becomes a tool to fabricate political alliances.

In Phèdre the backlash of these untimely, politico-erotic proclamations is severe, leading to fatal jealousy and gory deaths. Helen Mirren’s Phèdre is not just a femme fatale, but disturbed and vulnerable, Mirren revives Phèdre with psychological complexity and deadly anguish—as if there were a time bomb ticking inside her frail body waiting to explode. She approaches Dominic Cooper’s Hippolytus with a seemingly political intention refraining herself from touching him. Soon after, to Phèdre, it seems Cooper’s godlike presence becomes the embodiment of unimaginable carnal sins, for which she falls victim. Phèdre’s outburst of incestuous fantasies is, thus, inevitable and ends with her lavishing kisses on Hippolytus’s neck, a sexually perverse ordeal that turns the willful and dignified prince into stone. In absence of his stepmother, Hippolytus hysterically rubs off Phèdre’s kisses with water. Though subtle, this scene of sexual animosity is brilliantly delivered.

Hytner’s production also benefits much from the powerful supporting cast of Margaret Tyzack and John Shrapnel . Tyzack’s forceful and composed Oenone is a brilliant theatrical foil to a tumultuous Phèdre. Her malice is coupled with mother-like attachment to Phèdre as she controls and re-channels the queen’s perverse desire for political gain. If Tyzack is the star in the opening scenes, Shrapnel is the one to drive the momentum in this domestic tragedy. His blood-soaked Théramène delivers unto superstitious, short-tempered Theseus (Stanley Townsend) the precise description of Hippolytus’s cursed death in a calm, soothing tone that unexpectedly breaks into a soul-wrenching ‘scream’ and ‘roar.’ The nightmarish vision is complete: Mirren reappears pale as a ghost ostracizing herself by confessing incest as Aricia slowly drags Hippolytus’s mutilated corpse in a sack tainting the stage ruby red.

The only flaw in Hytner’s Phèdre, it seems, is the missing chemistry between Cooper’s Hippolytus and Ruth Negga’s Aricia. In the end, Mirren’s soulful performance touches our hearts—not the unconsummated love of the young couple. Phèdre’s passion, to us, is more universal than mere incest, and we find ourselves sympathising with the corpse left un-mourned on stage.