Hecuba’s words speak loudly not only to the weak and recently impoverished, but to the powerful whose greed and indifference shatter lives: “Politicians do not care what harm they cause, providing they can please a crowd,” she declared.
While Euripides’ plays explore themes like self-sacrifice and forgiveness in ways that prepared the Greek mind to receive the messages of the Christian gospels 500 years later, in Hecuba the playwright shows that the cruel blows of fate – most of Hecuba’s loved ones and almost all her children were destroyed by the time the play begins – can sometimes be assuaged by sweet revenge.
Elizabeth Carian as Hecuba is shattered when she learn ed that her son Polydorus – played by Diacrussi, who delighted his fans with his ATT debut – was killed in cold blood by family friend Polymestor, the King of Thrace.
Cooly, she lays a trap for the King, played with oily arrogance by Samuel Muniz. Luring him to her tent by the prospect of gaining more treasure – he killed Polydorus for his gold – he was savagely attacked (hell hath no fury…) by Hecu
ba’s attendants, who blinded the king and killed his own son.
The theme of the conflicts between official duty and the obligations of people to their friends and benefactors is also examined in the scene where Marc Osian, who plays Odysseus, whose life was spared by Hecuba when he was capture
d during a pre-war spying expedition, has come to take away Hecuba’s beautiful and youngest daughter
Polyxena. Odysseus is deaf to the pleas and admonitions of his victim’s mother and his own savior.
Polyxena, to be sacrificed to the gods and played with grace and quiet fire by Yaprak Unver, brings honor to the defeated Trojan royal family – and shames the Greeks – by willingly accepting her death and displaying great courage.
Diacrussi would love to perform more, but due to the multifaceted responsibilities he undertakes for each production, and because “it is not easy to both appear onstage and coordinate things offstage,” he has not been able to do so until now. “Seven years after the festival began is was a pleasure to be among the actors and feeling like an actor myself,” he told TNH.