Sophokles’s Elektra promises electrifying start to New Year in Brighton

Greg Hicks is going to be “one more cog in an unstoppable wheel of evil” in a new production of Sophokles’s Elektra.

Transcript

00:00Good afternoon, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. Lovely today

00:07to speak to Greg Hicks who is heading to Brighton Theatre Royal early in January. It's going

00:11to be a scintillating start to 2025 in Brighton before the play goes to the West End with

00:17Electra, Sophocles' Electra. And Greg, you were saying in the rehearsal room at the moment

00:21there's an incredible electrifying, nervous energy that you are creating. That's what

00:27it's all about, isn't it? Yeah, it is. And this play holds this compressed intensity

00:34like a lot of other plays don't. I mean, it's part of the great Greek canon of plays about

00:42this story, this particular story. But this play is so, it is like being in a compression

00:50chamber. There's no let up, there's not one single second where the emotional level is

01:00not sheer edged. It's extraordinary. It's like climbing up a very jagged mountain in every

01:07second. Absolutely, and that's the essence of Greek tragedy, isn't it? That claustrophobia.

01:12That's the essence of it, and I suspect that that's its healing power if there is such a

01:18thing in a play. Healing? Yeah, I think people, you know, when they went to see these plays,

01:26it wasn't about indulging these emotional heights and depths. It was actually

01:33living through them and thereby coming to an understanding, a deeper understanding of the

01:39human condition, which is perhaps a better understanding of the human condition. Yeah.

01:45And you are a cog, you were saying, of unstoppable… Yes, I'm a cog in an unstoppable

01:51wheel of retribution, which, I mean, looking at contemporary events, that's not out of our

02:03range of… Well, quite. You're saying that this is true to the spirit of the original,

02:07but has an incredible resonance for now. What is that resonance for now, do you think?

02:12Well, the resonance is that there seems to be

02:18a through line in these plays of what is absolutely inescapable,

02:26what is absolutely necessary, and what simply cannot be avoided. And it's how you deal with

02:36that imperative. If you resist it, there is no resistance. Electra doesn't even try to resist.

02:46She has to do what she has to do, and there is no alternative. I mean, she's advised not to do that,

02:53but obviously by the woman she's about to murder, which is her mother and her sister. But there is

03:01no escape. And that inescapable quality of necessity is something the Greeks really understood.

03:12It sounds like you are cooking up a very intense and grouping entertainment for us in Brighton.

03:16I hope so. I hope so. I have every confidence that that's what we'll deliver, yeah.

03:21Fantastic. Well, Greg, really lovely to speak to you, and really lovely to speak to someone

03:25who's got Keith Richards on his T-shirt. Thank you. Yeah, look, look, look.

03:28Come on, stand up, let's see. Yeah, yeah, there you go.

03:33Is there anyone cooler? I don't think so.

03:36No, I hope not.

03:39Lovely to speak to you. Thank you.

03:40Bye bye. Bye.