BLOODSPORT: AFTER HELEN OF TROY

Stratford East

★★★★★

“Dockery and Aikman are mesmerising in this tale of two women torn apart by events”

There is a brief scene in the recent blockbuster film ‘The Odyssey’ in which we see Helen restored to her position in Menelaus’ court after Troy falls. She is scarred and bowed, a reluctant wife-slave again.

Not so in Ava Pickett’s Bloodsport: After Helen of Troy. Helen, played by Downton Abbey’s Michelle Dockery, is indeed bloody and shocked as she is dragged back from the fighting into the pristine Essex home of her former best friend Cee (Laura Aikman), but she is by no means bowed.

Pickett is surely one of our most up and coming writers. Here she gives us a feel of Mike Leigh’s ‘Abigail’s Party’ early on then Yasmina Reza’s ‘God of Carnage’, and if she borrows from both, then the dramatisation offers the best of tributes. Pickett has also just co-written the script for Baz Luhrmann’s upcoming film Jehanne d’Arc so, maybe battle scenes are familiar territory. She sets her take on the return of Helen firmly in modern-day Essex but the ancient parallels are joyously clear. Troy has become a series of street wars and burnings, set off by Cee’s pugnacious husband Mario (Gerard Monaco) to redress the insult to his friend Marcus (Jay Taylor). This is, of course, the disappearance of Helen after a pick-up in a bar by lounge lizard Paris.

Mario is all fists, fight and fury and wants to go for a victory drink down the pub when he returns. He brutally ignores Cee’s carefully planned champagne celebration. Marcus is conciliatory and weak, just glad to have his family back together but, guess what, he is under Mario’s spell. So the two leave.

And that is the signal for the true nature of the play to emerge. There have been laughs aplenty for the audience up till now. Suddenly we are in much darker territory. Against an unmistakably suburban interior (Polly Sullivan) Director Lisa Spirling uses lighting flashes and explosive sound (Nicola T. Chang) to punctuate the change in tone. Helen gets over her simulated daze, pulls on black combat pants over her underwear and takes over Cee’s home as a fortress for her own female troops, including Cee’s apparently dozey maid Dani (a great performance by Maimuna Memon).

Dockery and Aikman are mesmerising in this tale of two women torn apart by events, with truths to face. There’s a wonderfully well-conceived ‘Messenger’ – Ethan Moorhouse – who introduces and holds the narrative line together, in a rapidly spoken Essex patois (full of profanities) commenting, Greek chorus like, on the unfolding drama.

There isn’t a redundant performance here or one that does not deserve praise. Spirling was introduced to the play when it was first written as part of a New Writing Programme and now brings it to fruition through skilful deployment of, as she says, a ‘ridiculously talented’ cast and creative team. She has delivered an ensemble backing for the two leads in which every player is clear and distinct in their roles. The courageous and shocking finale itself marks a remarkable departure from traditional theatrical outcomes. This play is one for the awards.

BLOODSPORT: AFTER HELEN OF TROY

Stratford East

Reviewed on 10th September 2026

by Louise Sibley

Photography by Tristram Kenton

BLOODSPORT

★★★★

“strong character acting and wry, comic moments to leaven the harsh story”

The theme of this new play by writers Rosalind Adler and Lea Sellers, just opening at the Park Theatre, is how the artistic world (music in this case) acts and reacts under a despotic regime led by a tyrant who can topple individuals with a single word.

Holy Fool is set at the height of the Stalin era of Soviet history, when cultural policy in this period centred on the doctrine of Socialist Realism. This mandated that all art must be optimistic and uplifting, accessible to the masses, and ideologically correct – in other words serve the interests of the Party. There are parallels to be drawn with current world powers. It is these that the writers and director Kate Fahy are keen to draw out in choosing Dimitri Shostakovich as the subject for this portrait of an artist under pressure.

Dimitri Shostakovich (Mitya) produced an extraordinary range of music. In his time it garnered both extreme praise for his genius and great hostility for the modern discordant elements of his compositions. Living under constant threat of torture and death, he walked a tightrope between appeasement of the tyrant and resistance to the strangling cultural environment. His story is skilfully told in a chronological narrative, and at the back of a dark, era-defining set (William Fricker) that includes a grand piano, and microphones that drop from the ceiling, we are given key dates on a black screen, including that of Stalin’s death, to help us navigate major events.

Four fine actors play the central roles (as well as an assembly of other characters): Mitya (Benjamin O’Mahony), his wife Nina (Jenna Augen), friend Izaak (Fergus O’Donnell) and a young woman who falls under Mitya’s spell, Katya (Phoebe Pryce). O’Mahony is, in turn, brilliant as the composer, then febrile, anxious and angry as the man. Augen as his soul mate and equal, maintains a solid but also light presence, wryly comic at turns, frustrated and tolerant. When she disappears from the narrative, after her death, we miss her almost as much as her husband does. As Mitya ages, Fahy makes the very sensible decision to let his gait and body movement tell of his deterioration without the need for superfluous make-up.

Shostakovich’s fourth symphony is the device which connects the narrative – composed between 1935 and 1936, then cancelled, achieving its premiere only in 1961. This is used cleverly (along with other compositions) by the writers and the creative team as a vibrant part of the drama. Finally, as the action moves toward Mitya’s last years, the back projection magically resolves into a vision of a freedom and safety that lights up the dramatic space – a middle class street of an American suburb in a time of hope: the sixties and seventies.

Overall, the threat of the Socialist Realism era is rather underplayed. However, this is not the first time, and it won’t be the last, that despots have tried to use force to silence artists. Underground resistance and the human spirit is the story told here in an extremely well created and performed piece of work, with strong character acting and wry, comic moments to leaven the harsh story.

Tag Archives: Louise Sibley

BLOODSPORT: AFTER HELEN OF TROY

★★★★★

Stratford East

BLOODSPORT: AFTER HELEN OF TROY

Stratford East

★★★★★

“Dockery and Aikman are mesmerising in this tale of two women torn apart by events”