Girl on an Altar: Eileen Walsh and David Walmsley bring a muscular energy to Marina Carr’s searing new play

Girl on an Altar

Abbey Theatre, Dublin

★★★★☆

Troy has been taken, but a foreshadow of defeat rather than victory attends Zeus Agamemnon, king of kings, as he returns to his family home in Mycenae to be reunited with his wife. Ten years has passed since the couple last saw each other, but Clytemnestra still grieves and seethes for her daughter Iphiginia, sacrificed on an altar to the gods, a gesture to guarantee her father’s military success.

The details of Marina Carr’s searing new play may be drawn from ancient mythology, but the scenario is less remote than relatable: reports of war crimes, corrupted leaders; this is the stuff of newspaper headlines today. The relationship drawn between her protagonists, meanwhile, feels fresh, modern and relatable. War may be the backdrop, but the real territory at stake here is the marriage bed.

[ Marina Carr: ‘We are not sacrificing children on altars, but we are still sacrificing children, make no mistake’ ]

Tom Piper’s set places the bed centre stage, on a shiny marble square edged by chalky coal dust: the first layers of excavation. Indeed, Piper’s stylish, stylised set only slowly reveals its sophistication, the forestage giving way to the “room of bones” where Agamemnon imprisons his women and, eventually, his wife: there are many more girls to be sacrificed. Precise and atmospheric lighting design from Amy Mae, with Kevin McFadden, slices the stage into discrete spaces that conceal and reveal family secrets, while Philip Stewart’s sound and original composition chill: war drumbeats and heartbeats are indistinguishable; a love song sounds like a dirge.

Annabelle Comyn, the director of this production, which the Abbey first coproduced in London in 2022, with the Kiln Theatre, casts a cool and measured gaze upon the heightened emotional drama. Carr’s text is a blend of interior monologue and short scenes of dialogue, which are full of Elizabethan grandeur and grounded, earthy physical descriptions. It also slips in and out of timelines, but Comyn commands its free-form structure with an impressive clarity.

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Aoibhéann McCann is a stoical presence throughout the 140-minute performance, as the servant Cilissa, a dispassionate audience understanding the inevitability of the unfolding story more than Cassandra (Pattie Maguire), the true prophet. As the warring couple, Eileen Walsh and David Walmsley bring a muscular energy, both physical and emotional, to their performances. If, at the end, there is no forgiveness, there is still desire: the full complexity of human life.

Girl on an Altar runs at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin 1, until Saturday, August 19th