ABSTRACT:

Everyone agrees that a “Hamlet” without the Prince is proverbially a raw deal. But a :Phedre” without the Queen, the Prince, in an iffy staging, an erratic translation and an operatically monumental setting is downright unconscionable.

The Brooklyn Academy of Music is, and has been, our prime importer of classic drama – devotees of serious theater owe it an incalculable debt – and Britain’s Almeida Theater, under the direction of Jonathan Kent, and Ian mcDiarmid, has established a blissfully deserved international reputation as among the most enterprising in the English -speaking world.

No emotion became this Phedre, except jealousy. her very body language was stilted, and her tattered anguish unremitting – I inwardly wept.