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Agamemnon: The Circle of Blood is a collage of theater, film, and performance art. Creator Rafika Chawishe takes the stage alone in a series of roles from Trojan War history as recounted in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon. Live monologues alternate, and dialogue with, filmed scenes.
On stage, Chawishe speaks as Clytemnestra, Cassandra, and unnamed common folk with jobs like border guard. On screen she and other cast members enact scenes set in modern times that resonate with the Greek history.
Sadly, commingling history with the present tends mostly to remind us how little we learn from the past, whether ancient or recent (witness the 2024 U.S. election). A roomful of office workers dance in celebration of an apparent power grab by an autocrat. Images of despots throughout history flash on the screen. Riot police beat demonstrators. Sounds of helicopters and gunfire ricochet through the theater.
Taken as a whole, however, the hourlong piece lacks focus and momentum. The monologues come across as pseudo-poetically self-important. I wasn’t always sure which character was which on screen, even with a basic knowledge of the story. An unnecessarily multilingual scene that goes on far too long positions Cassandra (illogically) as a refugee facing a Kafka-esque border bureaucracy. And the central figure, Clytemnestra, never emerges as a rounded character, instead remaining a cipher for ideas and generalized emotions.
With all the tumult, I was left bored and unsatisfied. Towards the end Clytemnestra intones, “I search for something, anything, to rise from this desolation.” The historical queen’s search may not have ended in frustration, but this viewer’s did. The show, I think, wants to be a call for humanity to do some soul-searching and to reckon with and draw wisdom from its history. It doesn’t look like humanity is about to do any such thing, and a self-serious jumble like Agamemnon: The Circle of Blood isn’t going to nudge anything in the right direction.
Agamemnon: The Circle of Blood is at La Mama through Nov. 24.
