Phaedra’s Love
The Vortex, through Sept. 24
Running Time: 1 hr
Phaedra’s Love is a Renaissance Austin Theatre Company production, but it’s on a recognizable Vortex trajectory since the hourlong production includes incest, murder, rape, and graphic scenes that require splash guards. English playwright Sarah Kane’s take on the ancient Greek tale is of a piece with the other dramas she wrote before committing suicide: It teems with sex and carnage. Kane’s plays were part of the “In-Yer-Face” movement in her homeland, where young writers slapped audiences with confrontational viscera. It’s not for the prudish eye.
Kane’s contemporary version of Hippolytus is a stark contrast to the character as written by Euripides, Seneca, and Racine, three dramatists who have retold the story. Not so much aloof as a bad boy, the prince is disgusting but good-looking. He has an active sexual life. On his birthday, while his fans outside hold roses, candles, and signs that say, “Happy Birthday Prince” and “Hippolytus is Jesus,” he watches TV lethargically in a pile of dirty laundry. He takes a sock, smells it, and blows his nose into it. He takes another sock, masturbates into it, and then starts munching on a Burger King Whopper.
In his preppy outfit wrinkled and torn at the knees, with his hair unkempt, Todd J. Porter’s Hippolytus is despicable; if I were to see him on the street, I might spit in his face (a testament to Porter’s acting). But his stepmother, Phaedra, loves him. With her husband, King Theseus, away for an indeterminable amount of time and her unafraid to shame the royal family, the queen goes down on Hippolytus while he wolfs some chewy candy. Not to give away the ending, but it is a Greek tragedy: Phaedra hangs herself, leaving behind a note that her stepson raped her. The crime is what saves Hippolytus from his own apathy.
On occasion, the play feels like a spoof. Kane intersperses the matter-of-fact imperialism with modern-day life. “Of course I still love my husband. I haven’t seen him since my honeymoon,” says Phaedra while arguing with her birth daughter, Strophe, whose androgynous head is projected on a screen eight feet tall. You can’t help but feel that the whole play is centered around penis-envy, with a couple of acts of fellatio and an act of revenge that makes Lorena Bobbitt look like a wimp.
This article appears in September 23 • 2005.