Andromache - Schaubuhne am Lehniner Platz. Pyrrhus, Mark Waschke and Andromache - Jutta Lampe. © Aro Declair.

Played on a raised plinth with bottles strewn round its base director Luk Perceval's Andromache has five magnificent actors in an intense production, his first at the Edinburgh International Festival.

The curtain rises millimetre by millimetre to reveal first the empty bottles and then the dark grey plinth with horizontal ridges on its side. A woman dressed in a strapless black dress is hanging down on it, her back towards the audience. In her hand a bottle she taps or rolls against the plinth again and again. Otherwise there is silence as the curtain reveals the rest of the cast - two men stand either side, another male, Pyrrhus, between the woman and another older female who dressed in a gold coloured dress is seated looking blankly out at the audience. The seated woman is played by Jutta Lampe, last seen by EIF goers in two Chekhov's Luc Bondy's version of The Seagull and Peter Stein's version of The Cherry Orchard. Here, almost unmoving, Jutta Lampe's Andromache is the maternal riven heart of the play.

Lit by by Mark Van Denesse with its set designed by Annette Kurz and costumes by Ilse Vandenbussche, Perceval's production has the barebreasted male actors clad in very long skirts so that in the many moments of deep silence they look like a dramatic section of a Greek friezed temple. But those who have to look at the English supertitles will find that the actors amplified voices make following the action difficult. Every voice comes out of the same speakers you have no aural sense of which actor has spoken, and sometimes the shadow filled lighting makes it hard to see the actors' mouths. It's a problem , many directors who use amplification should really address.

Luk and Peter Perceval have concentrated down Racine's Andromache to five characters and no chorus. After the siege of Troy the captive Andromache is over a year being wooed by the man who killed her husband and has so far spared her son - Pyrrhus, Mark Waschke. Hermione, who loves Pyrrhus, is played with raw despair by Yvon Jansen, it is Hermione's outbursts of rapid movement that dangerously erupt on the high plinth as she lunges at the man whose interest lies in another's lap. Like bookends, the manipulative Pylades, Andre Szymanski, and his best friend Orestes, Ronald Kukulies, also push the tussles between desire and the urge of a mother to protect her young son. Orestes has arrived to achieve two things, he's been sent to kill Andromache's son to ensure there is no revenge is mounted by Trojans and to fulfil his longing for Hermione.

This is an immaculate production, full of graphic silences and on the edge moments of energy, one intensified further for those who understand German when it is spoken.
© Thelma Good 16 August 2004. Published on www.Edinburghguide.com
Runs 16-19 August 2004 at 7:30pm.

Production Details.
Director - Luk Perceval.
Adapted from Racine's Andromache by Luk and Peter Perceval.
Designer - Annette Kurz.
Lighting Designer - Mark Van Denesse.
Costume Designer - Ilse Vandenbussche.
Cast.
Andromache - Jutta Lampe, Hermione - Yvon Jansen, Pyrrhus - Mark Waschke, Orestes - Ronald Kukulies and Pylades - Andre Szymanski.