{"id":585,"date":"2025-11-27T16:30:59","date_gmt":"2025-11-27T16:30:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/32\/?p=585"},"modified":"2025-11-28T16:12:47","modified_gmt":"2025-11-28T16:12:47","slug":"in-ransacking-troy-ancient-greeces-forever-war-inspires-a-feminist-fantasy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/32\/in-ransacking-troy-ancient-greeces-forever-war-inspires-a-feminist-fantasy\/","title":{"rendered":"In Ransacking Troy<\/em>, Ancient Greece\u2019s \u201cForever War\u201d Inspires a Feminist Fantasy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Martin Morrow<\/strong>*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ransacking Troy<\/em>, by Erin Shields; directed by Jackie Maxwell. August 6 to September 28, 2025. At the Stratford Festival, Ontario, Canada.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enough is enough. The war has gone on for almost 10 years. The body count, of both soldiers and civilians, keeps piling up. The two sides have fought to a stalemate. It\u2019s time for the women to step in and do something about it. Such is the premise of Erin Shields\u2019s audacious new play, an alternative narrative of the siege of Troy in which the wives, sisters and daughters of its Greek generals and heroes, sick of waiting out the bloodshed at home, set sail on a mission to end this \u201cforever war.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ransacking Troy<\/em>, commissioned and produced by Canada\u2019s Stratford Festival, is a pointed re-framing of the events of the Trojan War that can\u2019t help but make an audience think of the widespread rage and frustration over the invasions of Gaza and Ukraine. It\u2019s an angry work, but also one that is clever, moving and, often, very funny.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The women of Greece set out to end the Trojan War in Erin Shields\u2019s Ransacking Troy<\/em> at the Stratford Festival. Photo: David Hou<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Canadian playwright Shields is all about re-examining the Western literary classics through a female lens. In her 2022 play Queen Goneril<\/em>, produced by Toronto\u2019s Soulpepper Theatre, she imagined a prequel to Shakespeare\u2019s King Lear<\/em> that sought to explain the motives behind Lear\u2019s cold-hearted daughters. With Ransacking Troy<\/em>, which received its world premiere in the 2025 Stratford season, she weaves a new, \u201cuntold\u201d story into the Iliad<\/em> about a women-led peace mission, while also viewing the macho deeds in Homer\u2019s epic poem from a jaundiced feminine perspective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mission is instigated by Odysseus\u2019s wife Penelope (played by Maev Beaty), who is getting antsy with all those opportunistic suitors breathing down her neck in Ithaca. She ropes in a reluctant Clytemnestra (Irene Poole), whose beautiful half-sister, Helen, was the cause of the war. Electra (Helen Belay), Clytemnestra\u2019s daughter, insists on coming along, and she\u2019s joined by Helen\u2019s child, a teenage Hermione (Marissa Orjalo). The delegation also includes a wise queen, Eurydice (Yanna McIntosh), and a randy queen, Aegiale (Sara Topham), plus Ajax\u2019s tough half-sister Galax (Sarah Dodd), brought along for muscle, and shipbuilder\u2019s daughter Cur (Caitlyn MacInnis), for her carpentry skills. Unable to enlist a major goddess to aid them on their voyage, the women have to settle for silly Psamathe (Ijeoma Emesowum), the nereid who presides over sandy beaches.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Penelope (Maev Beaty, left) convinces fellow queen Clytemnestra (Irene Poole) to join her peace mission in Ransacking Troy<\/em>. Photo: David Hou<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Once arrived at Troy, they\u2019re able to cunningly slip inside the city\u2019s supposedly impenetrable walls and win the confidence of the Trojans through their queen, Hecuba (McIntosh again\u2014the Stratford production\u2019s nine-member cast all took on multiple roles). To convince the Greeks to back their peace scheme, they impersonate the Olympian trio of Athena, Hera and Aphrodite\u2014after realizing the men won\u2019t listen to their women, but they will<\/em> listen to their goddesses. That scene, which also required the dexterous actors to portray their gruff male counterparts, became the show\u2019s hilarious highlight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shields brightens her story with humour early on, but the shadow of Greek tragedy is never far away. It has a through line in the character of Clytemnestra, who is still grieving the death of her older daughter, Iphigenia, and hating her husband, the Greek leader Agamemnon, for sacrificing the girl to the goddess Artemis in exchange for fair winds to Troy. If, in Queen Goneril<\/em>, Shields gave us a plausible reason why Regan would want to viciously pluck out the Earl of Gloucester\u2019s eyes\u2014he had raped her as an adolescent\u2014here, she traces the conflicting emotions of Clytemnestra as she learns of her husband\u2019s subsequent conduct in the war and builds up a strong case for why she would ultimately want to murder him on his homecoming.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Irene Poole\u2019s Clytemnestra (left) confronts her half-sister Helen (Sara Topham), whose abduction sparked the Trojan War, in Ransacking Troy<\/em>. Photo: David Hou<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

We are also reminded throughout of the subservient roles played by women in a patriarchal society and the way men dominate them through sheer physical strength and fear. As with many a so-called \u201cstrongman\u201d today, the only hope of appeasing them is by appealing to their pride. Even after they believe they\u2019ve ended the war, the Greek women remain uncertain of how to go forward with their success and build a new, equal society\u2014leading to a litany of questions recited in one of the play\u2019s occasional Greek-chorus scenes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the first part of the play is backgrounded by the events of the Iliad<\/em>, the second half becomes a female Odyssey<\/em>, with our heroines on their homeward voyage confronting many of the perils\u2014from the Sirens and the Cyclops to Circe\u2014to be later encountered by Odysseus. Not surprisingly, the women deal with most of them differently: they playfully identify with the treacherously alluring Sirens, while Penelope bonds with the witch Circe (Emesowum) over their shared passion for the art of weaving.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Galax (Sarah Dodd, centre) confronts the multi-headed monster Scylla on the voyage home in Ransacking Troy<\/em>. Photo: David Hou<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The production was directed by Jackie Maxwell, one of Canada\u2019s most distinguished directors and a champion of female playwrights, who previously staged Shields\u2019s hit adaptation of Milton\u2019s Paradise Lost<\/em> for Stratford in 2018. Maxwell drew lively and distinctive performances from her all-women ensemble, led by the superb Beaty and Poole in the two primary roles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beaty, an actor who excels at playing witty, headstrong characters, gave us a Penelope every bit as shrewd and resourceful as her famous husband. She was an intrepid contrast to Poole\u2019s gloomy, bitter Clytemnestra, who, having lost one daughter, is understandably anxious about Belay\u2019s wilful Electra.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Yanna McIntosh as Eurydice (left) speaks to Electra (Helen Belay) in a scene from Ransacking Troy<\/em>. Photo: David Hou<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Playing the two most senior characters, McIntosh exuded weary wisdom as Nestor\u2019s wife Eurydice and embodied a powerful Hecuba that could\u2019ve stepped out of Euripides\u2019s The Trojan Women<\/em> (another of Shields\u2019s classical sources). Among the younger actors, Emesowum was especially fun both as the bubbly beach goddess Psamathe\u2014a sort of nereid Barbie\u2014and as a lonely Circe in need of girlfriends. In a sweet touch, there was also a budding shipboard romance, between MacInnis\u2019s butch Cur and Orjalo\u2019s femme Hermione, that took us out of Homer\u2019s demesne and into that of another Greek poet, Sappho.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The show was mounted in Stratford\u2019s Tom Patterson Theatre, whose elongated thrust stage is perfectly suited to a play set largely aboard a ship. Judith Bowden\u2019s spare set, darkly lit by Michael Walton, was dominated by an upstage structure, a large frame strung with ropes, that alternately suggested a gate, a ship\u2019s rigging and a warp-weighted weaver\u2019s loom, not to mention that Homeric symbol, the lyre. Bowden also designed the delightful costumes, which revealed how many changes you can ring on the classical Greek robe.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Ijeoma Emesowum as Psamathe, the goddess of sandy beaches, in Ransacking Troy<\/em>. Photo: David Hou<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Shields ends her play on a downbeat with the imminent return of the status quo\u2014true to the Homeric tale, but disheartening all the same. In Clytemnestra\u2019s unresolved anger we get a foreshadowing of the further tragedies awaiting the House of Atreus. And although we know Penelope\u2019s is a happier ending, she\u2019s going to have to wait another 10 years for it. When she told the women that she\u2019s going home to Ithaca, \u201cOdysseus might already be there,\u201d you wanted to call out, \u201cI wouldn\u2019t be in any rush!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In our time, women have achieved much of what these heroines hope for, and yet there are still men in power making war, killing thousands in the name of revenge or to satisfy their own egos. In her enticing feminist fantasy, Shields hasn\u2019t so much ransacked the Troy of Homer as confirmed its enduring relevance. <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n

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The Greek women battle a sea storm in a scene from Ransacking Troy<\/em>. Photo: David Hou<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
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*<\/a>Martin Morrow<\/strong> is a Past President of the Canadian Theatre Critics Association and a two-time winner of Canada\u2019s Nathan Cohen Award for excellence in critical writing. He has served as chief theatre critic of the Calgary Herald<\/em> (1988-2000), Fast Forward Weekly<\/em> (2003-06) and The Grid<\/em> (2011-14). Since 2010, he has been a theatre critic and arts writer for The Globe and Mail<\/em>, Canada\u2019s national newspaper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Copyright \u00a9<\/strong> 2025 Martin Morrow
Critical Stages\/Sc\u00e8nes critiques<\/em>,\u00a0#32, December 2025
e-ISSN: 2409-7411<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Creative<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

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