A disappointment after the ecstatic reviews for the Young Vic’s production. There’s a lot of ‘rah rah women!’ without an ounce of genuine feeling to back it up. There’s a lot of crap in the preface trying to preemptively defend having an unpaid chorus of women while the play’s men get names and get paid and I’m not buying an ounce of it.

This isn’t an easy play. It’s quite brief, and touches on issues of migration and asylum that are extremely topical. But little actually happens - there’s no resolution of the asylum-seeker’s situation. They remain in a kind of limbo, protected but apart, and denying to the last that they will integrate with their new home. Their tormentors likewise have no closure, no revenge is taken, and the threatened war remains a threat. One can only imagine what this play might have been when whole.

It is a shame the following two plays in this cycle were lost. I feel like it's just a prologue to a great story. It was my first Aeschylus, and probably not the best one to start with, but I did enjoy it.