Euripides’

The Women of Troy

Show details

Writer
Euripides, in a version by Don Taylor

Director
Gemma Fairlie

Venue
Online

Dates
Wednesday 10 March at 7:30pm

About the show

“The old life is gone, old gods, old hearth 
And home, destroyed.” 

The city of Troy is in ruins. Ravaged by an army of Greeks who swept through unseen, hidden by the night. Only the women survive. 

Shut away behind the thick prison walls, the women of Troy are powerless to save the ones they love or themselves.  

Trapped in their cells, and isolated from the world, they rage against their fates. Left alone with their grief, they can only mourn for the lives they once knew, and fear for what the future holds for them. 

In a LAMDA first, this filmed production of The Women of Troy was performed and recorded in the actors’ homes. This innovative film will be digitally screened on 10 March.

Don Taylor was a playwright and poet, and a director of theatre, television and radio plays.

After leaving Oxford, he worked as drama director at the BBC, and between 1960 and 1990, he directed nearly a 100 television plays, the first works by David Mercer and Hugh Whitemore, as well as 17 of his own original TV plays, and a number of large-scale classical productions of Shakespeare, Granville Barker, Arthur Miller, Sheridan, Bulgakov and Edward Bond.

He translated and directed for BBC Television and Theban plays of Sophocles - Oedipus the King, Antigone and Oedipus at Colonus. He followed this with translations of three Euripides war plays –⁠ Iphigenia at Aulis (directed by Katie Mitchell, initially at the Abbey Theatre in 2001 and at the National Theatre in 2004), The Women of Troy and Helen.

He continued working in the theatre, directing Sir Anthony Quayle in his last King Lear and also in Gogol's The Government Inspector for Compass Theatre, of which he was co-director at the time.

In 1996 he and Ellen Dryden set up First Writes Radio, an independent drama company. Don Taylor's many stage plays include The Roses of Eyam, The Exorcism, Daughters of Venice, Brotherhood, When the Actors Come, Retreat from Moscow, When the Barbarians Came and The Road to the Sea.

He died in 2003. 

Euripides was born near Athens between 485 and 480 BCE and grew up during the years of Athenian recovery after the Persian Wars.

His first play was presented in 455 BCE and he wrote some hundred altogether. Nineteen survive –⁠ a greater number than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles combined –⁠ including Alkestis, Medea, Bacchae, Hippolytos, Ion and Iphigenia at Aulis.

His later plays are marked by a sense of disillusion at the futility of human aspiration which amounts on occasion to a philosophy of absurdism.

A year or two before his death he left Athens to live at the court of the king of Macedon, dying there in 406 BCE. 

The making of The Women of Troy

Cast

Chorus
Zoë Armer

Chorus
Matilda Bailes

Menelaus
Kené Chelo Ortiz

Athene/Chorus
Emma Cooney

Andromache
Sarah Farrell

Cassandra 
Lanihuli Gilbert

Chorus
Lucy Gray

Chorus
Lucy Havard
​​

Helen
Ciana Howlin

Chorus
Marie Kizonzolo-Fruchart

Talthybius
Andrew Krueger

Hecuba
Mathilde Majnoni

Poseidon
Elliot Nolan

Chorus
Clara Rozzi

Chorus 
Lilly Walker 

Book now

As this live stream is completely free, we would ask if you are able to donate towards our Student Mental Health and Wellbeing Fund instead.

Our suggested donation of £14, equivalent to our standard ticket price, could make a real difference. The pandemic has heightened anxiety and concerns for the future among students. LAMDA provides a programme of wellbeing support for students but there is a great need to extend this further.

Thanks to match funding, every donation will be doubled! This means your generosity will have even more of an impact, enabling us to offer additional support to our students at such a challenging time.

Thank you on behalf of all of us at LAMDA and we hope that you enjoy the show.

Creative team

Director
Gemma Fairlie

Assistant Director
Tom Bostock

Designer
Sara Perks

Movement Director
Maggie Ann Bain

Set/Costume
Designer

Sara Perks

Lighting Designer
Joshua Pharo

Sound Designer
Elena Peña

Costume
Supervisor

Georgia Rose

Vocal Coach
Stevie Rickard

Editor
Joseph Lynn

Production team