Kae Tempest’s unmissable Paradise at The National opens onto a kind of purgatory. A group of aimless women wake up slowly after a stormy night. They dwell in a makeshift camp on a barren stage, their shabby clothes a signal that if there once was life on this island, only the tattered memory of it remains, writes Madeleine Kelly.
The play is an adaptation of one of the less frequently staged and more frustrating Greek tragedies, Sophocles’ Philoctetes. Tempest does not stray much from the original plot in which Odysseus, having abandoned the titular character wounded on a desert island at the beginning of the Trojan War, returns to persuade him to come back to Troy with his famous bow and boost the morale of the war-weary troops.
Tempest’s captivating script breathes life into an old story, at once musical and muscly, brimming with rich imagery and complex thought. At the end of one particularly eviscerating monologue in the middle of the play, the stunned audience burst into applause.
The decision to have an all-female cast allows Tempest to explore the performance of masculinity and Lesley Sharp does this well in her brilliant depiction of Philoctetes as a puffed-up, washed-up hero, too settled in his pain to move on. Meanwhile, Gloria Obanyo plays Neoptolemus, the disgruntled son of a dead hero, with all the fragile pride of a teenage boy, and Anastasia Hille is the weatherbeaten Odysseus whose callousness is punctured briefly by the memory of the war dead. They move around each other on stage like caged animals, too afraid to show weakness or vulnerability even at the cost of connection.
Whilst their performances are rich, it is the chorus of women who make the play great. An hour and 50 minutes of bullying and bravado would wear thin if it were not for their tenderness and humour. The women are the remnants of a world that once was. Civil war and tsunamis have taken their homes but, unlike the men, they refuse to stagnate. Seen through their eyes the men’s drama becomes ridiculous: “Keep your bloody hair on”, they chide. Not content to passively spectate, the chorus shares their stories; for a minute their lightness is replaced by a deep chasm of grief as they remember the horrors they have seen and suffered.
But unlike the men they refuse purgatory. In amongst the wreckage, they keep dreaming for one another, tending to each other’s wounds and working to create a space if not free from pain then not bound by it. In Tempest’s dark and complex play, they are beacons reminding us that there is death, yes, but there is a life after it too.
Olivier Theatre, The National Theatre, Southbank SE1 until September 11th. Times: Mon – Sat: 8pm; Matinees Thur & Sat: 2.30pm. Admission: £20 – £89.
Box Office: www.nationaltheatre.org.uk