Phaedra: The Clock Is Ticking Remix

We've always wanted to see Racine's Phaedra -- apparently only cheese-eating surrender monkeys the French really go for it, so it's not performed all that often in these parts. Yet what drives the story is as universal as the suspicion that something might be up between Carol and Greg on the Brady Bunch. When Phaedra marries the warrior-king Theseus, she develops "feelings" for her stepson Hippolytus -- but he's got eyes only for Aricia ("Aricia, Aricia, Aricia!").

Ghostlight Theatrical's Confuse-A-Cat version, called The Phaedra Project, draws upon both the Racine and Euripides versions of the story. As directed by Beth Raas, the story runs in reverse -- opening with catastrophic consequences and rewinding back to the moment these events were set in motion.

This highlights the secrets-and-confessions element, rather than the dire consequences, to make the play "resonate with a modern audience." On the downside, for first half the audience is largely clueless as to who these people are and what's going on. Is it really necessary? The very relevant point of Phaedra is that some people are born just waiting for the wheels to come off.

Nature vs. nurture? What if you're unlucky both ways? (Phaedra's "unnatural" affection for Hippolytus is a family trait. Her bull-fetishist mother gave birth to the Minotaur.) Phaedra can't keep from fondling Hippolytus's sword, even if she knows that way lies her doom.

The set is spare; an empty space hung with clocks (the idea is, again, that these characters all want to go back in time to before they exposed their dark secrets). The audience sits around a circle. There's a feeling of authenticity in this bare-bones presentation, of a community sharing its great stories for the benefit of young and old, even if some of the young don't really want to be there.

The cast is not uniformly up to the demands of the text, and can tend to rush through lines, rendering them incomprehensible. (The teenager near us complained on her cellphone at intermission about trying to track the story with all the "thees and thous" -- there were none, but we took her general point about the language.) By the second half, most had hit their stride.

In particular, Edwin Scheibner's awkwardly fatherly Theseus stands out, along with Aaron Wagner's dutiful, pent-up Hippolytus. Margaret Bicknell as Phaedra doesn't capture a queen's demeanor (her haughtiness is more that of an affronted Nordstrom's shopper), but she does present a woman torn in two by competing desires, flashing from fatalistic resignation to furious craving.

The Phaedra Project
Fri-Sun, November 3-19
The Chamber Theater, 915 E Pine, 4th Floor
Tickets: $12 general/$10 students & seniors

Photo: Margaret Bicknell as Phaedra. Taken by Molly Bennett.