My favourite play: Jenna Russell

I wrote to him later about what I felt. Not only was it so theatrical with a beautifully spare design that told the story so well, but everyone on stage knew what play they were in. I know people bang on about that, but it’s rare. When actors aren’t sure, they go into panic mode and it’s everyone for themselves. When you see everyone singing from the same hymn sheet, that’s not only down to a good company leader, which they would have had in Lia Williams, but also a really great director who knows exactly where the ship is heading.

I remember an extraordinary moment when, in the middle of a long speech during a court scene, the actor who was speaking sneezed. I’ve never seen anyone do that on stage before or since. It was a real moment – and it made everyone reset. I still wonder if that was direction or an accident. I’m going to ask him.

Analysis – David Benedict

Before the recent runaway success of his masterly update of Sophocles’ Oedipus, Robert Icke uprooted Aeschylus’ greatest play – Greek drama’s most famous three-part revenge drama – and made it a timeless thriller.

Lia Williams was the vengeful Klytemnestra, murdering her husband Agamemnon (Angus Wright) to the fury of their daughter Electra (Jessica Brown Findlay).

Hildegard Bechtler’s abstracted, sliding panelled set and Natasha Chivers’ lighting created a charged, austere atmosphere into which Icke built further tension.

He created the character of a therapeutic inquisitor piecing together evidence of the bloody murders to agonised Luke Thompson as Orestes, desperately in search of truth.

He also patiently and movingly staged some of the horror traditionally reported but unseen, not least the extraordinarily upsetting murder of Iphigenia, played by a child actor, who calmly took a fatal overdose as her father stroked her hair.

Icke had already caused a stir with Mr Burns in 2014, but Oresteia absolutely put him on the map, going on to play the West End, Germany and New York.