Starring: Cliff Cardinal, Richard Clarkin, Krystin Pellerin, Lisa Ryder
Director: Richard Rose
Playwright: Rick Roberts
Run Information: Orestes is currently streaming on Tarragon Theatre’s website until February 14, 2021.
Rating: ★★½
Rick Roberts’ adaptation of Euripides’ tragedy is an ambitious but muddled foray into live digital theatre.
For the last 11 months, I’ve been yearning for live theatre that is specifically designed for the digital world. Throughout the pandemic, much of the programming pumped out by theatre companies has been single-shot recordings of shows originally meant for the stage and a live audience. Not that they’re any bad; they just lack originality.
But the pandemic has offered an opportune moment for theatre artists to explore a new medium: the screen.
So I was excited when Tarragon Theatre announced that Rick Roberts’ Orestes was being adapted from its original form as a traditional stage play into a show specifically designed for Zoom audiences. It is a project far more ambitious than Tarragon’s other pandemic programming – almost entirely made up of acoustic plays – and required a rewrite of the script, a reimagination of the directorial vision, and a special web portal capable of handling complex digital design elements and a cast of ten actors broadcasting live from their homes.
Orestes is a strong candidate to be chosen for an online adaptation. After all, its themes centre around our digital world and the pervasive cancel culture that surrounds it.
The titular character, played despondently by Cliff Cardinal, is a social media sensation who has murdered his mother Clytemnestra (who herself murdered Orestes’ father Agememnon). Even though he was found not criminally responsible, he has been banished and cancelled from all his social media platforms. Sympathetic to his plight, his sister Electra (Krystin Pellerin) and fan club (Gabriella Sundar Singh, Anthony Perpuse, Bren Eastcott, and Jeff Ho) try to enlist the help of Orestes’ uncle Menelaus (Richard Clarkin) – an influential aristocrat and two-faced politician – to help get him back online.
But Menelaus has issues of his own. He’s trying to rekindle his relationship with his wife Helen (Lisa Ryder), take care of his daughter Hermione (Eleanor Guy), and stage a political campaign – all while dealing with his cranky father-in-law Tyndareus (David Fox, who came out of retirement to play this role).
If this all sounds confusing and convoluted, it’s because it is. In his adaptation, Roberts tries to cram in every character from Euripides’ original and creates tangential plot lines for each one. We learn, for instance, about how Helen is haunted by Clytemnestra’s ghost in a scene captured with enrapturing horror by Ryder. In another, we discover that Hermione is an aspiring singer-songwriter who is trying to release a family album amidst all this family drama.
These scenes aren’t uninteresting per se, but just don’t serve the main story. Adding to the confusion is that viewers can decide which characters to follow. It’s not just gimmicky, but detrimental to the show: based on my selections for the choose-your-own-adventure storylines, I ended up learning more about the relationship dynamic between Menelaus and Helen than about the main character.
But I didn’t regret those choices. I actually found Menelaus and Helen to be far more interesting than Orestes and Electra.
Cardinal’s Orestes spends much of his time wallowing in his grief – almost manipulatively forcing others to pity him. He comes off too much as a spoiled brat and entitled social media influencer (think Jake Paul) than someone who could gain the viewer’s sympathy. There’s not much to Pellerin’s soft-spoken Electra as well, other than her being Orestes’ sidekick and advocate. (But then again, perhaps it’s because I didn’t follow her storyline.)
Clarkin’s Menelaus, however, is deviously devilish and eerily similar to those politicians we know all too well who sell their soul for political gain. And as the hyper-sensitive and stubborn Helen, Ryder is the sole actor who evokes the audience’s pity.
But in Richard Rose’s online production, the characters and the story play second fiddle to the digital play space created by Frank Donato. With a retro ‘90s style backdrop, the actor’s individual Zoom videos glide onto the screen in a highly choreographed manner – marking each character’s entrance and exit.
Words flash across the screen – representing the character’s unspoken thoughts and feelings. All the actors are placed in front of a green screen so that Shannon Lea Doyle’s multitude of various settings – looking as if they were built using Minecraft blocks – can be superimposed into the background. Paired with Roberts’ heightened and stylized language in the script, the set creates an uncanny atmosphere.
There’s even a chat box function that audience members can use. Occasionally, even the fan club members pop in. Just like Roberts’ story, however, all the features just feel too overwhelming to keep track of (even for this Gen Zer).
Still, I appreciate Tarragon taking this risk to produce a show in a totally original online format. It’s a learning curve for creators and viewers alike. But it's a format we should continue to explore.