A Harvest of Furies

Casey (Show Me Where the Hurt Is) puts an American gothic spin on Greek tragedy in this haunting contemporary retelling of Aeschylus’s Oresteia. Aggie returns from war to discover that his wife, Cleo, has been having an affair with his cousin Enzo when he stumbles on them having sex in a shed. While Aggie struggles to get his head around the betrayal and deal with war ghosts that have left him deeply scarred, he gets into a car accident with his and Cleo’s youngest daughter, Ingrid, who dies. The tragedy leaves Aggie even more mentally and physically incapacitated, and Cleo plotting revenge. She persuades Enzo to help put Aggie out of his misery. Afterward, Aggie’s and Cleo’s other two children, Emma and Orrie, figure out their mother murdered their father, and part two of the tragedy is about how they, in turn, seek revenge on Cleo and Enzo. Box cutters and kitchen knives abound, as do some stagey gimmicks, including a glimmering light that manifests every time the soft-spoken Orrie suspects something is awry and poetic interjections that function as a Greek chorus. As the story slithers toward creepy catharsis, Orrie and Emma decide to end the “family curse” once and for all. It’s an ambitious tale, experimentally told—and not for the faint of heart. (Nov.)