L U N A T A L K with Eva Moon

Elektrifying

October 17, 2008 on 10:22 am | 1 person has joined the conversation. We need you too. | In General Musing

Here’s the twitter version:

Elektra in 140 chars: Agamemnon axed by faithless wife. Daughter Elektra gets brother Orestes to kill mom. Dances herself to death. Curtain.

The opera went on somewhat longer.

Elektra opens Saturday at the Seattle Opera. I experienced a dress rehearsal last night, thanks to the odd circumstance of being hired as a “Greek theatrical troupe” for an opera benefit party next Thursday. I hope they are not disappointed, because if the opera itself is any indication the Greeks are an unforgiving lot.

Elektra raves, rants, seethes, screeches, dances and ultimately dies in one long, relentless hour and forty minute act and she really has no one to blame but herself. I kept wishing someone would toss the girl a Prozac.

The staging is moody, the music lush and brooding. It’s a dark stone courtyard, perpetually night washed in dim blue light. Oddly, all the real action happens off stage. The whole thing is nothing but monologuing. My mind began to wander.

I imagined Sarah Palin as Elektra:

The office of the Governor in Alaska is the scene of the drama. Since discovering her brother-in-law has axed his marriage to her sister, Saraktra lives only with the thought of vengeance. She exists like a wild beast, banished from society, a butt of ridicule to the aides, a horror to all, only desirous of the blood of her brother-in-law in atonement for that of her sister. The man has no rest. Fear haunts him.

Saraktra’s sister is entirely unlike her. So frightfully do her dreams torment her that she comes to Saraktra to beg her to give up her obsession so they can both move on and put it behind them. Saraktra does not comfort her. Her sister then mocks her with the news that Orestes Monagan, the public safety commissioner she oppointed is gone. This is a terrible blow for Saraktra, who had hoped that Orestes would return and wreak vengeance on the evil brother in law. Saraktra determines to complete it alone. She digs up her cell phone and unleashes an impassioned campaign.

But the messages were false, she claims when confronted with her actions. The press, who now enters the scene, at first cannot believe that the half-demented woman is the governor of Alaska. But the brother in law is ultimately axed. Saraktra, her thirst for vengeance satisfied, under the spell of a blood-madness, dances, beginning weirdly, increasing to frenzy, and ending in her selection for the McCain ticket.

Curtain.