By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: ***

WHEN?: Saturday 24 January, opening 5 February and running through 12 April 2025 RUNTIME: 95 minutes without interval

Elektra is angry and we know this because she sports a buzz cut, wears a Bikini Kill T-shirt and shouts into a variety of onstage microphones, some with distortion pedals, unavailable to the rest of the cast like a slam poet goes full Sinead O’Connor on Saturday Night Live.

• Read on for reasons including how Larson’s performance is wholehearted, brave and uncompromising

We imagine it is the choice of director Daniel Fish (Oklahoma!, Young Vic Theatre) to amplify our protagonist’s voice above all else but we’re sitting in the 6th row and find it difficult to hear any other member of the cast clearly apart from Oscar winner Brie Larson in the title role.

Elektra is angry because her father – King Agamemnon – is murdered by her mother, now London resident Stockard Channing as Queen Clytemnestra in fake fur looks incredible and is so much better than when we saw her in Night, Mother at Hampstead Theatre and Apologia, Trafalgar Studios, and her new lover Aegisthus.

The action pauses after 15 minutes for a further 10 to fix a problem with the sound which has temporarily meant the difficulties we had hearing all of the cast bar Elektra briefly affected Oscar winner Larson also and in the unintended break we ponder all the incredible Jamie Lloyd work faultlessly using microphones to underline words and poetry including at this very venue (Romeo and Juliet, Duke Of York’s Theatre).

There’s a clumsy underlining of the word ‘father’ – whenever anyone utters it there’s an offstage clanging as if the stage manager is hitting a radiator with a large comedy spanner – and Elektra sings the word ‘no’ rather than speaking it each time it appears in the script. And, given the subject the matter, like ‘father’, it does so rather a lot.

Director Fish stripped down beloved musical Oklahoma! to reveal the perhaps unexpected darkness at its core most recently and we’re not quite sure what he wanted to coax from Elektra because it’s far less effective and its bold stylistic choices seem to exist to ‘do a Jamie Lloyd‘ rather than to break new ground.

Much better was the more intimate Old Vic production starring the uncompromising Kristen Scott Thomas and Jack Lowden (Measure For Measure, Donmar) as her brother Orestes at the Old Vic in 2014 who would go on to star together in Apple’s glorious Slow Horses.

Larson is a fine actress whose doubtless lucrative film work in the Marvel franchise we’ve chosen not to see and this is a performance as wholehearted, brave and uncompromising as the hairdo she is rocking and band she is promoting.

We haven’t mentioned Orestes, played by Patrick Vaill (Oklahoma!, Young Vic), so far here because his big moment we won’t spoil took place in a part of the stage we couldn’t see from our D1 stalls seat.

This production transferred into the West End after a short run in Brighton and we assume the dedication of the staff in discouraging audience members taking pictures of its curtain has much to do with its troubled nature because allowing such behaviour – potentially amplifying positive experiences – seems a far less certain outcome here.

Last night we saw Oscar winner Rami Malek as Oedipus at the Old Vic and, of the 2, that would be the Hollywood star does Greek tragedy London ticket we would recommend.

• Main pictures via Facebook courtesy ATG Tickets and Elektra
• Have you seen an Elektra before and what did you think of this 1? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
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