The Oresteia

This collection includes three full-length plays: AGAMEMNON, THE LIBATION BEARERS, and THE EUMENIDIES, collectively known as THE ORESTEIA. In AGAMEMNON, the title character, having sacrificed his daughter, Iphigenia, to win the battle of Troy, returns to Argos. His wife, Clytaemnestra, murders him while her lover, Aegisthus, who will soon assume the throne, looks on. In THE LIBATION BEARERS Agamemnon's daughter Electra mourns her father's death. Her brother, Orestes, returns to Argos to kill their mother and stepfather, now king, and avenge their father's death. In THE EUMENIDIES Orestes, trying to escape the vengeance of the Furies, is rescued by the gods and ordered to stand trial in a democratic court in Athens. He is acquitted, and the Furies are transformed and civilized to end the cycle of violence. "THE ORESTEIA is the granddaddy of domestic-violence drama, and that's hardly Greek to us. The 2,500 year-old Aeschylean trilogy - on which Sonny kills Mom and her love, who made sword meat of Dad - is as American as apple pie ... Auletta - whose own works include WALK THE DOG WILLIE, RUNDOWN, and the Obie-winning STOPS and VIRGINS - seems an odd collaborator for Aeschylus. But he is in fact an old hand at diddling with old Greeks. He has adapted both Sophocles's AJAX and Aeschylus's THE PERSIANS for Peter Sellars. He also adapted Georg Bchner's DANTON'S DEATH for Robert Wilson." -Carolyn Clay, Phoenix (Boston) "... I very like very much the truncated colloquial that you've worked out. It's better than Ezra [Pound] managed and it's just right for the purpose you have, to provide a fast moving text for the stage ..." -letter from James Laughlin, New Directions "... Auletta's script glistens with old strokes highlighting rather than detracting from Aeschylus ..." -Ed Siegel, The Boston Globe