Elektra at the Duke of York review: Brie Larson's riot grrrl Greek is an exercise in alienation

What the hell just happened?

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.

Rami Malek kicked off Greek week with an Oedipus that was a bit odd, but as another Oscar winner takes on another Sophoclean parent-killer - Captain Marvel star Brie Larson playing Elektra - things are getting really weird.

It’s directed (boy is it directed) by the experimental American director Daniel Fish, whose production of Oklahoma! in 2023, dubbed Sexy Oklahoma, stunningly reconstructed the hokey old Rodgers and Hammerstein warhorse into a raw, sun-scorched slice of horror.

No chance of this being called Sexy Elektra. Larson blasts on stage like a riot grrrl: she sings a bit, shouts a lot, spits occasionally, all into a heavily amped microphone. At first she’s alone, then a curved curtain rises to reveal a chorus of women, also with mics, and they engage in a strange raging dialogue where she speaks bitterly and they sing in close, keening harmony (stunning music by Ted Hearne).

Here’s the story: Agamemnon killed his daughter in order to appease the gods. His wife Clytmenestra then kills him for killing their daughter. Their other daughter, Elektra, teams up with her long-lost brother Orestes to get revenge for their mum killing their dad. Not that you’d necessarily get any of that from watching the production, which uses Anne Carson’s arch, dense translation and adds a thick exo-skeleton of stuff on top.

Fish doesn’t let a single line go un-weirded. Everytime anyone says Aegisthus (Clytemnestra’s new husband), everyone spits. When they say Orestes they pat their chests. When Elektra says the word “no”, she sings it, an elongated, “noooo,” detaching it from the words around it.

A nozzle issues pressure jets of black liquid onto the gold robes of the cast, while Larson is a furious teenager in a Bikini Kill t-shirt, her clothing marking her out as different from everyone around her. There’s a blimp in the air, too. Is it the gods? It’s got an arrow painted on it - like Artemis’s arrows?? WHO KNOWS.

Larson tackles Anne Carson’s translation - which is very faithful and sometimes quite beautiful, but mostly an impenetrable slog - in an extraordinary way, bringing layers of bitterness, resentment and desperation to the lines. Stockard Channing plays a wonderfully villainous, unrepentant Clytemnestra, clad in thick fur - “it suits me, this grand palace life,” she purrs.

If your mind remains open enough, there are bigger pictures to be seen here: what do you do in the face of ridiculous evil? Why is there a duty to be moderate or remain sane? The perpetuity of violence, too: Agamemnon killed Iphigenia, Clytemnestra killed Agamemnon, now Orestes has to kill Clytemnestra.

But whether there’s much sense to be made, or indeed whether sense needs to be made, changes from moment to moment. Maybe it’s enough to enjoy the good bits - Patrick Vaill’s energising Orestes (pat) and Greg Hicks’s oily Aegisthus (spit). It’s so ritualised, so alienating that you can only imagine this is what it would feel like to go back in time and watch a tragedy in 5th century BC Athens.

“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.