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Breaking
Strain Burton Taylor Theatre 16.09.02 |
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Breaking Strain by Justin Butcher is a tragic-comic update on the legend of Hippolytus. Hippolytus is son of Theseus, and is also the object of his stepmother, Phaedra's, desire. When he rejects Phaedra's love she falsely accuses him of rape and turns Theseus against him. Killed by Poseidon at Theseus's request, he is restored to life once his innocence is proven. Performed in the intimate space of the Burton Taylor Theatre, the intense dialogue between Justin Butcher and Katy Feeney is riveting and powerful. Both characters are comical at times, which helps enable the audience to identify with both of them and also get drawn into the extremes of passion and madness which both characters display as the play unfolds. Breaking Strain is a revealing title for a play about the limits of human temptation or resistance: that all things have a breaking point, or a point of no return. It is the disasterous explosion of sexual power between Phaedra and Hippolytus, at the height of their incestuous passion, which leads to Phaedra's downfall and which is dramatically depicted in a gruesome sex and death scene at the end of the play. The play
is simple and direct with a Grecian setting. It combines a traditional
tragic chorus, who play out the legend to the audience, with the modern
drama between a forty-something gardener-turned-wife, who discovers that
her new stepson is a neurotic athlete with a gorgeous arse. By taking
the Greek tradition and placing it in a modern context, Justin Butcher
exposes human dilemmas and passions in their raw form, prompting the audience
to question their princples and attitudes towards
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