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'Phaedra' review: Fatal attraction in the 'burbs Robert Hurwitt A classical tragedy of forbidden passion is made new with irresistible immediacy in Adam Bock's "Phaedra." Ancient myth is reborn as a suburban tale of fatal stepmotherly attraction, with tragic impact intact. It's an impressive and deeply affecting feat. Bock, director Rose Riordan and a strong Shotgun Players cast weave a compelling spell of stifling middle-class repression. Marriage is an uneasy truce and parenting a minefield. A truth or even a strong opinion bursts like a firecracker in the enforced silence of unspoken compromises. An expression of love is an artillery shell. Even the silences - washed in the scudding clouds and surf of Lucas Krech's projections and Hannah Birch Carl's sound design - can be deafening. Riordan, associate artistic director at Portland Center Stage, makes eloquent use of Bock's skill with a pause, broken sentence or freeze-frame. When the tragedy becomes unspeakable, it's expressed in waves of silent passion, pain, guilt and overwhelming despair in Catherine Castellanos' formidable performance. The latest entry in Shotgun's ambitious all-world-premieres 20th season, "Phaedra" is a major departure for the author of quirkily smart, comic and evocative delights such as "Five Flights" and "The Typographer's Dream." If its passions and resonance are ancient, it's also as significantly different from Racine's "Phèdre" as that classic was from Euripides' "Hippolytus," both of which it draws upon. Phaedra has become Catherine (Castellanos), the regal, deeply unsatisfied - just the way she places a coaster on the table speaks volumes - wife of a rigidly upright, rock-rib anti-tax or anti-mercy judge, Antonio (Keith Burkland). Patrick Alparone plays her stepson Paulie with the semi-articulate intensity of a James Dean updated (Hippolytus' beloved horse has become a Mustang) to even less cause-specific rebellion. Trish Mulholland's watchful, intently upbeat housekeeper sets up the dense tensions within Nina Ball's model-home-sterile, two-story living room. Plot and simmering poisonous passions thicken when Paulie comes home from rehab, accompanied by Cindy Im as his plainspoken fellow parolee and probable lover, Taylor. It wouldn't be right to detail how the repercussions of Catherine's long repressed lust for Paulie play out. Even those who know their Racine and/or Euripides will find resonant surprises in Bock's telling. Let's just say that, in Riordan's skillful orchestrations, Bock's spoken evasions and struggles for expression achieve an intense tragic eloquence. And the storm of repressed passion that can break through Castellanos' impressive composure to shocking effect, is even more overwhelming when it doesn't. |
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