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A review by sebseb
Andromache by Euripides
4.0
Waiting for Neo
- basically just trash-talking duels for a whole play
- fleshing out mythic "side characters" = essential myth-head text
- Hermione is the best Paranoid Teen Drama Queen in all literature?
- most dislikable chorus EVER ("It is sad to see / Anyone in such grief, even a foreigner")
- I found this jarring because the chorus is usually meant to be/guide us, the audience: can’t tell if Euripedes is saying he doesn’t like me or not, sad
- love how the female battle of wills (Andromache vs Hermione) gets taken up by the male heroes (Peleus vs Menelaus) and finally blows up into violence in a really strange and displaced way (Neoptolemus and.... Orestes?!?)
- having depictions of the Trojan War resurface as traumatic baggage in a family dispute is ace
- gets deep into politics of marriage: both as male-male bonds of alliance and exchange, and as lived reality of women
- rampant misogyny hasn't aged well
- everyone’s constantly talking about the absent king Neoptolemus, and having all the drama hinge on a character who isn’t there (and spoiler who never turns up) feels weirdly modern
- it also makes the space, the Phthian Palace of Peleus, feel like a cross between Elsinore from Hamlet and Manderley from Rebecca – like a regal cage filled with worry and distant men
- super dramatic surprise twists: most exciting but least resonant Euripides i've read so far
- also has the best characters (though all are dislikable)
- basically just trash-talking duels for a whole play
- fleshing out mythic "side characters" = essential myth-head text
- Hermione is the best Paranoid Teen Drama Queen in all literature?
- most dislikable chorus EVER ("It is sad to see / Anyone in such grief, even a foreigner")
- I found this jarring because the chorus is usually meant to be/guide us, the audience: can’t tell if Euripedes is saying he doesn’t like me or not, sad
- love how the female battle of wills (Andromache vs Hermione) gets taken up by the male heroes (Peleus vs Menelaus) and finally blows up into violence in a really strange and displaced way (Neoptolemus and.... Orestes?!?)
- having depictions of the Trojan War resurface as traumatic baggage in a family dispute is ace
- gets deep into politics of marriage: both as male-male bonds of alliance and exchange, and as lived reality of women
- rampant misogyny hasn't aged well
- everyone’s constantly talking about the absent king Neoptolemus, and having all the drama hinge on a character who isn’t there (and spoiler who never turns up) feels weirdly modern
- it also makes the space, the Phthian Palace of Peleus, feel like a cross between Elsinore from Hamlet and Manderley from Rebecca – like a regal cage filled with worry and distant men
- super dramatic surprise twists: most exciting but least resonant Euripides i've read so far
- also has the best characters (though all are dislikable)