It's the night of Electra's (Sarah Livingstone) 16th birthday. Her father Agamemnon was brutally murdered by her mother Clytemnestra (Mary Galloway) and the new lover Aegisthus (Saul Boyer), whom she can hear having sex all night. Electra is sleeping in a tent outside, haunted by dreams of murder fantasies mixed with confusion about sexual identity and desire for masculinity. She's at the height of puberty, where everything feels "weird" to her, and her sister Chrysothemis (Hellie Cranney), who constantly “hangs out with her boyfriend", is no help to her either. Torn between innocence and revenge, Electra is awaiting the arrival of a new man in her life: her brother Orestes (George Gillies), whose dream-like appearance commands her to kill Clytemnestra and Aegisthus to revenge their father.

Returning from the Edinburgh Fringe, where it formed a companion-piece to last year’s Sophocles adaptation Oedipus: Where Three Roads Meet, Celine Lowenthal and Terrible Edgar have adapted Sophocles' Electra into a modern, post-Freudian play in a world full of confusion and sexuality. The cast is brilliant throughout. Livingstone gives a superb Electra, at times an innocent "sweet little girl", at times a vengeful fury. Her opening monologue is compelling and convincing, and the tense, strangely sexual connection to Aegisthus is immediately striking. Galloway also deserves a special mention in her performance as a stiff upper-lip, stern Clytemnestra, an unusual but nonetheless very interesting interpretation of Sophocles.

The setting on stage is simple but very fitting – little except the tent and a tin bath.  The music creates a gloomy, emotive, almost psychedelic atmosphere and a few sound effects are placed very carefully to enrich the impact of words on Electra's mind.

However, the ending, as the only major change from Sophocles' original, seems out of place and unfitting compared to the rest of the play. Aegisthus’ sudden change of heart is not explained any further and his motives remain unclear. Not only does the rape scene violate the traditional innocence on stage of Greek theatre, it makes the play seem over-sexualized and unnecessarily trying-to-be-shocking. The ending overall doesn't seem completely thought through and abrupt, as many questions remain unsettled: Electra's feelings after having killed her mother are ambiguous, the Freudian “Electra Complex” is, though hinted at throughout the play, never fully formulated, and the questions of justice, commensurability and suffering are left unanswered.

The play is, nevertheless, certainly worth seeing, as it features great acting and some novel and thought-provoking ideas in the interpretation of Sophocles.