'The Seven Pomegranate Seeds' Review
Venue: Rose Theatre, Kingston
Dates: 4 November 2021 - 20 November 2021
OUR VERDICT:
Retellings of Greek myths are having a moment.
From The Song of Achilles to The Women of Troy, browse any bookshop and you’re bound to come across a classical story that’s been retold through a contemporary lens.
In particular, we seem to be drawn to stories about women: the mythical wives, witches, and goddesses whose familiar fables are now being mined for insights into power and patriarchy.
The Seven Pomegranate Seeds is the perfect play for those in the grips of Greek myth mania.
A concise 80 minutes without an interval, this frenetic two-hander is a little bit like a short story collection – using brief vignettes to reimagine the tales of seven women from Euripides.
Thus, Persephone becomes the victim of a murderer on the Yorkshire moors, Alcestis is rescued from death by the ever-suave Pierce Brosnan (don’t ask), and Phaedra pines over a stepson who slouches across the stage, flicking through a Year 12 textbook.
It’s an ambitious undertaking, and it demands quicksilver performances from its two-woman cast. Luckily, Niamh Cusack and Shannon Hayes are more than up to the challenge.
They leap ably from character to character, delivering comedy one minute and tragedy the next. Their delivery of the densely poetic script is light and engaging - no small feat given that they’re also required to navigate one of the most complex stage sets I’ve seen in years.
THE OTHER RICHARD
This set is almost a character in itself - an immense web of string that hangs from the cavernous ceiling of the three-storey stage, twisting around props and clinging to seats in the stalls.
Seven stones are suspended from this string, and at the end of each vignette, Cusack and Hayes must send one thudding to the ground with the help of an oversized pair of shears.
When they’re not engaged in this task, they’re often busy wrapping string around their waists, snipping off lengths, suspending objects from it, weaving in and out of it… it’s an impressive sight, certainly, but the ornate choreography can occasionally feel like an obstacle to the fluidity and emotional clarity of the drama, rather than an expression of it.
And herein lies the problem.
The Seven Pomegranate Seeds was originally performed on Radio 4, and some manouvering has been necessary to transform it into an on-stage spectacle.
Occasionally, it can feel as though the visual element - however impressive - is an afterthought grafted onto an already complex work. Telling the stories of seven women in 80 minutes is a daunting feat at the best of times, and you can’t quite shake the feeling that it might benefit from a simpler staging.
But that’s not to say that The Seven Pomegranate Seeds doesn’t have plenty to recommend it.
The central performances are stellar, and there’s a great pleasure to be had in discovering how the story of each mythical woman has been relocated and reimagined.
Ultimately, though, this ambitious production lacks the moments of stillness that would allow an audience to appreciate its seven narratives as a satisfying whole.
