The Seven Pomegranate Seeds

Colin Teevan’s verse retelling of seven women’s stories from Euripides’ plays was recently heard as a three-hander on BBC Radio 4. But here it becomes a duologue, performed by Niamh Cusack and Shannon Hayes on a stage dominated by hanging pieces of string, the threads of stories past.

The large stones held up by some contain significance as protective rocks that keep Persephone, abducted to the underworld, "set apart from the world of men". They are cut down after each story, one of a number of visual flourishes in Melly Still’s artful production that makes full use of the Rose’s cavernous auditorium. Seats are bound in twine and white powder poured down from gangways high above the stage.

Teevan updates familiar characters such as Medea and Phaedra to today. Medea is reimagined as a nurse in an abusive marriage, the violence manifested on cushions. Phaedra is an alcoholic with an unhealthy interest in her silent stepson. Other interpretations contain more surreal twists. Alcestis, who on her deathbed implores her husband not to remarry, becomes the wife of a celebrity restaurateur who is guided through his grief not by Heracles but by Pierce Brosnan.

The most moving retelling, and the one that contains the clue to the title, is that of Creusa, who Cusack portrays as a woman recollecting her own lost child while attending a party to mark her wealthy friends’ adoption of a Syrian baby. It’s loaded with references to the hypocrisies of Western privilege, and contains a moving coda in her reunion with her lost son ("What if he’s a Tory?" she frets).

Cusack has an ability to deliver lines in a way that she always seems to be on the cusp of breaking into laughter. This makes the pain, when it comes, all the more affecting. Hayes, meanwhile, shows an impressive poise for her age. The chemistry between them is palpable and they make Teevan’s poetry sing.

Still’s production is gorgeously lit by Malcolm Rippeth and underscored by Jon Nicholls’ pop-infused soundscape, which lifts the energy between stories. Its drawback is that it can feel overwhelming; although an undoubted feast for the eyes, there are so many visual reference points it becomes disorientating. There is also some tonal inconsistency, with the opening monologue of Persephone, which is firmly grounded in the mythical world, feeling out of kilter with the rest.

As with the recent Metamorphoses at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, which also put a contemporary spin on ancient myths, there is something strangely reassuring in hearing these ancient tales now. Skilfully woven into a tapestry of women’s pain, they show the ancient and the modern are still very much bound together.