Andromaque takes place in the shadow of the Trojan War, and the principle characters carries their own personal burden from the conflict. Each is under the shadow of their own past; and in the intimate staging of this Pembroke Players production, a single light shining from the corner of the stage allowed each character’s actual shadow to loom large on the back wall.

With so much emotional trauma borne by each protagonist in this play, it was an interesting decision to give Orestes, and Orestes alone, a personified ‘shadow’ – an addition to Racine’s text. At times this worked very well, particularly in the final act when Orestes descends into madness. At others, however, the mimed actions of the ethereally beautiful Alice Pickard as the shadow detracted too much from the main focus of the plot, and Orestes found himself rather overshadowed.

Judith Lebiez’s Hermione reached an excessive pitch of emotional intensity too early on, instead of descending into despair as the tragedy progressed. She was overly dramatic for the small space, despite the fact that, as Director and Lighting Designer, she used the space extremely well. The red light that suffused the stage whenever the carnage of the Trojan War was remembered, consuming the character then lost in reminiscences, worked very well.

Laura Mingham shone as Andromaque, however; she flawlessly assumed a sense of tortured calm, conveying her internal emotional turmoil every time she turned her pale, strained face towards the audience. Despite being the title character, Andromaque is physically absent for much of Racine’s play; her hooded figure was present at the corner of the stage from the beginning of the play until her entrance, however, and I was disappointed when she did not resume her portentous presence in the corner of my eye at the beginning of Act 2. Mingham was complemented by Rebecca Sugden, as Andromaque’s confidante Cephisa, who was equally convincing in her emotional breakdown.

The confidantes, in fact, were superb. Anna Wagner as Cleone was emotionally pitch-perfect and more believable beside Lebiez’s manic Hermione: and alongside Guillaume Dubach as Pylades, successfully relayed the events of the final act, which happens offstage. For a play whose protagonists are derived from Homeric legend it was slightly strange that the secondary characters that carried the tragedy.