Another Greek tragedy for a Hollywood star

DUKE OF YORK’S THEATRE

Another day, another Hollywood star in a Sophocles tragedy given a major overhaul by a dynamic young director. And if you thought the critics’ average rating of 2.9★ for Rami Malek in Oedipus, wait until you get to the bottom of this roundup to see what they collectively thought of Brie Larson in Elektra. Daniel Fish, whose dark reinterpretation of Oklahoma! had plenty of fans, went full weird in the opinion of many of the reviewers. Brie Larson hid her acting talent beneath a lot of shouting and loud speakers. Only Stockard Channing emerged unscathed.

[Links to full reviews are included but a number are behind paywalls and therefore may not be accessible]

The Guardian’s Arifa Akbar (4★) continued to be a fan of Hollywood stars in extreme interpretations of Sophocles’ classics. Having been one of the few critics to give Rami Malek’s Oedipus four stars, she duplicated her rating but this time was a lonely voice.  Here’s part of her commendation: ‘Part spoken, part sung through in recitative and partly shouted in fury, this is a lyrical, avant garde creation, like a long lamentation, bare in its staging and emotions.’ ‘The anger is never shrill or flatly pitched – her delivery captures not only anger but also grief, resembling Hamlet when at her most melancholy. It is a magnetic performance, fearless for a West End debut.’

Sarah Crompton at WhatsOnStage (3★) found  ‘the production, full of strangeness and insight, feels half-baked, as if all its elements haven’t quite had time to gel. It simultaneously compels attention and frustrates it.’ She described how ‘Lines are spoken out rather than to one another, formalised and ritualistic rather than naturalistic…The effect is to turn the piece into an abstract meditation rather than drama, a gloss on Elektra not the thing itself. I rather loved it, but it never quite becomes the sum of its parts.’

Olivia Rook for LondonTheatre (3★) described Brie Larson thus: ‘her detached, reflective performance style makes it difficult to feel a connection with her character. Her voice is deliberately flat, which often jars, particularly when she is reunited with her brother and her reaction is borderline emotionless.’

Time Out’s Andrzej Lukowski (3★) said, ‘The biggest problem for me was the use of Anne Carson’s poetic but starchy 2001 verse adaptation – there is some mordant wit in there but I’m not convinced the formality of the verse helped the drama.’

‘It’s haunting, punchily feminist and perverse, all at once’ said Alice Saville in The Independent  (3★). She continued: ‘this staging is full of a mesmerising but near-stagnant stillness’ She concluded, ‘It’s a fascinating experiment, one that’s beautiful, but ultimately impenetrable.’

Tim Bano in The Standard honed his sarcasm: ‘It’s not entirely clear if it was Elektra, or an exercise in alienation. A 75-minute test as to whether an audience can keep an open mind.’ He skewered the director: ‘It’s directed (boy is it directed) by the experimental American director Daniel Fish…(he) doesn’t let a single line go un-weirded.’ He ended, ‘“Let me go mad in my own way,” Larson cries – and that’s the whole show, really. Always baffling, never boring, and completely mad in its own way.’ No stars given, which may be intentional, but I’ve put it down as 2★.

The Stage’s Sam Marlowe (2★) was damning: ‘It is so self-consciously stylised, so artful and so devoid of any genuine sense of humanity in extremis that it’s more likely to provoke a yawn or a weary eye roll than pity or terror. You sense that it’s straining for austere elegance and intellectual heft; it comes off simply as sterile and insufferably pretentious.’ Matt Wolf for The Arts Desk (2★) said, ‘The hipster vibe might seem to invite us all to this pathological party only to leave us on the threshold awaiting some way in.’

The Telegraph’s Dominic Cavendish (2★) wasn’t impressed: ‘what gets confused swiftly is where our attention should fall. The problem of over-emphasis is redoubled by Larson’s jolting, forceful delivery into a microphone, sometimes with added distortion and with an almost tic-like need to amplify and draw out every use of the word “no”.’ He wasn’t entirely negative: ‘The laurels go to Stockard Channing (Greece is the word…), giving us a Clytemnestra of stately bearing and stirring defensiveness and lending the pivotal mother-daughter battle an urgency, danger and truthfulness.’

The Times’ Clive Davis (2) recalled happier times at the theatre: ‘Some shows you walk home from humming the songs or cooing at the acting. After Elektra, which gives us Brie Larson as a punk princess agitating against something rotten in the state of ancient Argos like some shaven-haired proto-Hamlet, you go home still boggling at the misguided avant-gardery of it all.’ His last words offered an olive branch to the star: ‘Larson is clearly a gifted, authoritative performer. But she is hemmed into a concept that makes her Elektra only a raging bore.’

Describing it as a ‘droning dud’, Broadway World’s Alexander Cohen (1★) had many questions: ‘Why is there a dangling blimp? Why is there a paint canon sporadically spritzing the chorus? Why does Larson wail atonally like a brat-like banshee into a microphone without any momentum to propel her? It took about three minutes for me to realise that it’s not meant to make sense. This is theatre where the #vibe rules supreme.’

Critics’ Average Rating 2.5★

Value Rating 31 (Value rating is the Average Critic Rating divided by the typical ticket price)

Elektra continues at the Duke of York’s Theatre until 12 April 2025. Buy direct from the theatre

If you’ve seen Elektra at the Duke of York;’s Theatre, please add your review and rating below