I wasn’t a fan of Simon Stone’s production of THYESTES currently playing at Redfern’s Carriageworks.

The story follows twin brothers Thyestes (Thomas Henning) and Atreus (Mark Winter) who jealously murder their half-brother Chrysippus (Chris Ryan, who then adopts a range of female characters for the rest of the piece), as he is too much favoured by their father, the king. The pair are exiled to another kingdom, which they alternately rule, until envy taps them on the shoulder and the unholy scheming begins anew, leading to the hideous outcome for which the piece is known: the killing by one brother of the other’s sons and the feeding of those sons to their father.

This was one of those torrid, exacting, harrowing, gross out, confronting nights at the theatre that I could have done without.

I mean what was Simon Stone trying to do here, really! I’m trying to figure out where he was coming from with this piece…Maybe the bottom line was that he was trying to out Kosky Kosky, the former enfant terrible of Australian theatre. I was kind of surprised, that no-one walked out of the theatre.

The biggest plus of the night for me was the set. It was a knockout. The white painted scene was like in a frame with the audience facing each other from either wise. The many scene changes were quickly managed with digital surtitles running at the top and the bottom of the stage.

This Hayloft Project’s (Australia) production of THYESTES, co-written by Simon Stone, Thomas Henning, Chris Ryan and Mark Winter after Seneca’s tragedy, opened at Carriageworks on Wednesday January 18 and runs until Sunday February 19, 2012.

© David Kary

24th January, 2012

Tags: Sydney Theatre Reviews- THYESTS, Seneca, Simon Stone, Thomas Henning, Chris Ryan, Mark Winter, Carriageworks, Sydney Festival 2012, David Kary, Sydney Arts Guide.