Patrick Comerford
The Arcola Theatre in London is staging Iphigenia by Euripides in a new English version by Stephen Sharkey, adapted and directed by Serdar Biliş. It opens tonight (9 April) and continues until 2 May 2026.
Iphigenia is a story of sacrifice, parenthood and the human cost of war – then and now.
A young girl stands at the altar. A nation holds its breath. The winds have stopped. The Greek fleet is stranded. King Agamemnon is told by the gods that there is only one way for his army to reach Troy: he must sacrifice his daughter, Iphigenia.
It is a stark, contemporary reimagining of Euripides’ classic text and confronts the timeless question: what do we owe our country – and what do we owe our children? Blending the brutal beauty of ancient tragedy with voices of today, this new production replaces the traditional chorus with filmed testimonies from women across cultures, interwoven with live contemporary folk music that bridges East and West.
In this production, Mithra Malek plays Iphigenia, Indra Ové is Clytemnestra, Simon Kunz is Agamemnon and Kalia Lyraki is the Musician. The director and adaptor Serdar Biliş was born in Istanbul, and moved to London for a career in directing. He has an MA from Middlesex University, has been an associate director at Arcola Theatre and Liverpool Everyman, artistic director of Pürtelaş Theatre, and teaches at Kadir Has University in Istanbul and in Florence.
The translator Stephen Sharkey has updated and adapted a wide variety of classic and contemporary stories for the stage. His translation of Euripides’s Ion was produced by the Gate Theatre and directed by Erica Whyman.
The name Iphigenia (Ἰφιγένεια) means ‘strong-born’, ‘born to strength’, or ‘she who causes the birth of strong offspring’. In Homer’s Iliad, Iphianassa (Ἰφιάνασσα) is the name of one of Agamemnon’s three daughters (Iliad ix.145, 287), a name that may be simply an older variant of the name Iphigenia.
For Euripides, Iphigenia is a daughter of King Agamemnon and Queen Clytemnestra, and so a princess of Mycenae. On his way to the Trojan War, Agamemnon offends the goddess Artemis by hunting and killing one of her sacred stags. She retaliates by preventing the allied troops from reaching Troy unless Agamemnon kills Iphigenia, his eldest daughter, at Aulis as a human sacrifice. In some versions, Iphigenia dies at Aulis, and in others, Artemis rescues her. In the version where she is saved, she goes to the Taurians and meets her brother Orestes.
Iphigenia in Aulis or Iphigenia at Aulis (Ἰφιγένεια ἐν Αὐλίδι) is the last of the surviving plays by Euripides. Written between 408 BCE, after Orestes, and 406 BCE, the year Euripides died, the play was first produced the following year in a trilogy with The Bacchae and Alcmaeon in Corinth by his son or nephew, Euripides the Younger, and won first place at the City Dionysia in Athens.
Mikis Theodorakis composed the score for Michael Cacoyannis’s film Iphigenia
Iphigenia in Aulis has had a significant influence on modern art. I became aware of that impact through the 1977 film Iphigenia (Ιφιγένεια) by the Greek director Michael Cacoyannis. It was the third in his Greek Tragedy trilogy, following Electra (1962) and The Trojan Women (1971), and Mikis Theodorakis composed the score. Cacoyannis adapted his film from his stage production of Iphigenia at Aulis.
Iphigenia tells the story of events immediately before the Trojan War. Helen, the wife of Menelaus, ran away to Troy with Paris, Priam’s son. Agamemnon, Menelaus’s brother and the King of Argos, gathered a large Greek expedition at Aulis to bring back Helen.
However, Artemis, the goddess of hunting, angered by an offence from Agamemnon’s father, King Atreus, caused storms to hinder the Greek fleet. This sets the stage for the film’s beginning.
The Greek armies have been waiting for far too long for the winds to rise and blow eastward, carrying their boats to Troy. They are tired, bored, hungry, and eager for battle. In an attempt to appease them, Agamemnon (Costa Kazakos) allows them to take sheep from a nearby temple dedicated to Artemis. In the chaos that ensues, Artemis’s sacred deer is accidentally killed. This angers Calchas (Dimitris Aronis), the high priest of Artemis’s temple, who delivers an oracle to Agamemnon in the presence of Menelaus (Kostas Karras) and Odysseus (Christos Tsagas).
Artemis was the daughter of Zeus and Leto, and twin sister of Apollo. She was the patron and protector of young children, especially young girls, and the goddess of marriage and childbirth. Her great temple at Ephesus was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and she was also revered in Didyma, Delos and Delphi.
According to Calchas, the oracle demands that Agamemnon offer a sacrifice to atone for defiling holy ground and for killing the sacred stag. Once the sacrifice is made, Artemis will allow the winds to blow east so the armies can sail to Troy. The sacrifice demanded is Agamemnon's first-born daughter, Iphigenia (Tatiana Papamoschou). News of the deal spreads quickly among the army, although for some time they do not know the exact nature of the sacrifice.
After a heated argument between the two brothers, Agamemnon sends a message to his wife Clytemnestra (Irene Papas) in Argos. In the letter, Agamemnon asks his wife to send their daughter Iphigenia alone to Aulis, supposedly to marry Achilles (Panos Mihalopoulos), who is part of Agamemnon’s expeditionary force. Despite her husband’s instructions, Clytemnestra decides to accompany her daughter to Aulis.
From then on, the tension and the tragedy intensify. Agamemnon begins to doubt his plan. After admitting his deception to his old servant (Angelos Yannoulis), Agamemnon sends him with another letter to Clytemnestra, revealing the deal and urging her to cancel Iphigenia’s journey. However, Menelaus’s men intercept the servant on the road and bring him back to Aulis. In the confrontation that follows, Menelaus condemns his brother for sacrificing Greece’s honour for personal interests.
Agamemnon challenges this argument, persuading Menelaus that no war is worth the life of a child. Following their agreement, Agamemnon decides to deliver the letter to Clytemnestra personally, but it is too late. A messenger announces the imminent arrival of the wedding party, including Clytemnestra. Agamemnon is stunned by the news and resigns himself to fate: ‘From now on, fate rules. Not I.’
When Clytemnestra arrives at Aulis, she is filled with happiness about her daughter’s imminent marriage to Achilles. However, Iphigenia’s first meeting with her father is fraught with double entendre, which is devastating. As she speaks of the wedding she expects, he speaks of her impending sacrifice. Although they use the same words, their meanings could not be more tragically divergent.
When Agamemnon meets Clytemnestra, he tries in vain to persuade her to return to Argos without witnessing the ‘wedding’. Clytemnestra and Achilles soon discover the truth from Agamemnon’s old servant.
Achilles is overwhelmed with shame and anger when he learns of the deception that has ensnared him in this tragedy. Clytemnestra is furious and, in desperation, confronts her husband one last time.
However, Agamemnon is ensnared in his own trap and cannot retreat, as Odysseus has threatened to disclose the true nature of the sacrifice to the army if Agamemnon fails to comply with the oracle’s demand. Meanwhile, preparations for the sacrifice progress swiftly. ‘Let's not delay; the wind is picking up,’ declares Calchas.
Odysseus finally acts by revealing the chosen sacrificial victim to the army. Now there is no turning back. Iphigenia briefly manages to escape, but is soon captured by Odysseus’s soldiers. In a poignant scene reminiscent of the dying sacred stag at the beginning of the film, Iphigenia is seen lying exhausted and breathless on the forest floor, evoking a sense of impending tragedy. Her captors return her to the camp to face her fate.
Resigned to her destiny, she has a heart-rending final meeting with her father before ascending the hill to her fate. Meanwhile, Agamemnon, surrounded by his jubilant army, watches helplessly from below as Iphigenia reaches the summit and is swiftly seized by Calchas. At that moment, as the wind rises, Agamemnon rushes up the steps. At the top, his expression reflects the assumed sight of his daughter’s death.
With a strong wind now blowing, the men rush to the beach, and launch their ships to set sail for Troy and its promised riches.
The play as it exists in the manuscripts ends with a messenger reporting that Iphigenia has been replaced on the altar by a deer. However, most critics accept that this is not an authentic part of Euripides’s original text but the work of an interpolator. A fragment of the play may indicate that Artemis appeared to console Clytemnestra and assure her that her daughter had not been sacrificed after all. But if this is a surviving reference to Euripides’s original ending which has not survived.
Cacoyannis made a number of changes to Iphigenia at Aulis to adapt it for modern cinema, with some significant divergences from the original plot. He does away with the traditional Greek tragic chorus originally used to explain key scenes, replacing it in some cases with a chorus of Greek soldiers. He introduces as dramatis personae Odysseus and Calchas, who are not present but are mentioned in the original play, to further the plot and voice certain themes.
As in Euripides’s original play, Cacoyannis is deliberately ambiguous in his ending. Although Greek myth says Iphigenia was miraculously saved at the moment of her death, this is not depicted in either the play or the film. Her true fate is left in question, but Agamemnon’s expression leaves little doubt that his daughter has been killed.
In Euripides’s Iphigenia at Aulis, Iphigenia’s rescue is described second-hand by a messenger. In the film, there is no overt reference to this event: the audience sees clouds and mist, followed by a shot of Agamemnon’s shocked expression.
A stall in Ephesus sells souvenir statues of Artemis, alongside figurines of Greek philosophers and the Virgin Mary (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)The testimonies woven into Stephen Sharkey’s new interpretation of Iphigenia opening at the Arcola Theatre in London tonight are said to be raw, intimate and fiercely honest. They speak of motherhood, loss, duty and war, and they reframe this classical play by Euripides for a modern world and offer a powerful counterpoint to a story shaped by the decisions of men.
The role of gender in Iphigenia in Aulis becomes clear in the play. Classical Greek was a male-dominated culture, the majority of Greek warriors and heroes were male, and women had no political rights or rights over their own bodies – their role was to bear children and listen to their husbands or, if they are unmarried, their fathers.
As a woman, Iphigenia has no true choice in who she marries, as it is her father’s role to select and approve of a husband. Even when Achilles and Agamemnon reveal the truth, Iphigenia knows she has no choice and is forced to beg her father to change his mind.
Eventually, she concludes that her sacrifice would be worth the furthering of the war. She notes that it would be better that her life was lost than the lives of all the soldiers gathered there, as a woman's life bears a lot less value than the life of a man. She feels obliged to make the decision because of the subservient role she is expected to play to the men in her life. Euripides’s Iphigenia in Aulis highlights the importance of gender roles in both the decision Iphigenia makes and in how she is treated by her father, Agamemnon.
The play also deals with the themes of sacrifice and duty. Iphigenia is willing to make a great sacrifice to further the Trojan War, a war that she is not involved in directly herself.
Many major Greek artworks depict the Greek warrior or the art of warfare, including buildings, statues, coins, and vases. A major theme in war is sacrifice, and it was regarded as a great honour to die in battle as a hero.
Iphigenia recognises this when she chooses to make the sacrifice so that the Greek warriors could sail onwards to Troy. She bears a great sense of duty to her country, and she chooses to lay her life down not for her sake, but for the sake of the war and her country. She only asks that her name is written in history for her great sacrifice, although she does not get this. In some translations, Artemis sees Iphigenia’s sense of duty and her willingness to die an honourable death.
Euripides wrote Iphigenia in Aulis between 408 BCE and 406. Although the Trojan Wars in the 13th or 12th century BCE, provides the setting, the more immediate context is the Peloponnesian Wars between Athens and Sparta fought in 431-421 BCE and 413-404 BCE, or the earlier Persian Wars that lastedfrom 499 until 449 BCE.
As wars and conflicts unfold and intensify in those regions in recent weeks, Euripides and his Iphigenia in Aulis become even more relevant today.
The German historian Heinz Richter (1939-2024) speculated that the debate over who is Greek and who is Turk, who is European and who is non-European, may have started as early as the Persian Wars, perhaps even from the Trojan War, and continued into modern times. The US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth posted ‘Back to the Stone Age’ on X a week ago (2 April 2026), echoing Trump’s threat to bring Iran ‘back to the Stone Ages, where they belong.’ Iranian diplomats responded directly: ‘Stone Age? At a time when you were still in caves searching for fire, we were inscribing human rights on the Cyrus Cylinder. We endured the storm of Alexander and the Mongol invasions and remained; because Iran is not just a country, it is a civilisation.’
The Cyrus Cylinder, dating to 539 BCE, is one of the earliest declarations of human rights.
Other official Iranian responses added: ‘We will not be driven back to the Stone Age by your bombings. We are a nation with 7,000 years of civilisation.’
Trump, in his crude and illiterate failure to understand the very foundations of civilisation that have endured for so long, shows no appreciation of the place of Persian culture in shaping the classical world and our cultural identity today.
Once again, the demands of another Artemis (this time Artemis II) distract from the real lessons of the futility and tragedy of war, from the consequences of impetuous and capricious decision-making by rulers who would be kings and who are driven more by their own needs to project a sense of self-importance, of the way the decision to go to war impulsively sets off a chain of events that are soon beyond control, of the dangers of listening to voices that claim to be divinely inspired or sanctioned, of the ways war divide and destroy families, and of the deadly consequences of war for young people who have had no say in the decision-making processes yet are sacrificed on the altar not of a god but of a blustering and ill-advised king.
Trump has set in motion a future chain of events over which he has no control. Like Agamemnon, he may yet rue the future he has cursed us with and cry out: ‘From now on, fate rules. Not I.’
No comments:
Post a Comment