Play review: Iphigenia in Tauris

See-also: Play review: Hippolytus. A lighter work this time. Not to be confused with Iphigenia in Aulis, obvs.

The story: Iphigenia bemoans her fate: saved by Artemis from being sacrificed by her own father, she is exiled priestess in an uncouth land, serving the hard rites of Artemis who demands sacrifice of all sailors washed up on the shores of the Sundering Sea. Speaking of which, as she goes in, two such appear: her brother Orestes, and his chum Pylades. O is hounded by the Furies for killing his mother in revenge for her killing his father, but Apollo has told him to come here to gain absolution by stealing the statue of Artemis. But! The temple looks strong. They resolve to wait till night in a cave near the sea. Alas! Herdsmen washing their cattle in the sea capture the two, and oh the irony (though she knows it not yet): Ip will sacrifice her own brother. But as she talks to them - see, do nothing precipitately, she has learnt something from Hippolytus - she realises they are from Mycenae, and offers one of them the chance to carry a letter - telling her folks she is still alive and misses them dearly and would like to go home - there, in exchange for his life. The two chums ritually fight for who gets to be noblest, and O, who is senior, wins. In all this no-one's name is mentioned, except P, and his name doesn't matter. Bound by oath, P worries that he might be shipwrecked and lose the letter. Ip solves this by reading it to him. ZOMG! She is talking to her brother. They are like amazeballs and hugs all round. But how to escape? She will tell the uncouth King Troas that the pair are unclean and need purging in the nearby sea, as does the statue of A. So off they go, with some token guards obliged to avert their eyes, and escape on the handy ship that the local yokels failed to see. A bit of token competition among the gods for will-they-won't-they-escape is won by Athene who also tells the grateful-because-he-would-hate-to-offend-the-gods Troas that it is her will, and not only that he must send the chorus back home too.

Motto: unlike the rather more serious Hippolytus, this one only has a light sprinkling of life-sucks-then-you-die. I think it's mostly just a fun story of adventure and escape and a happy ending (wiki, I find after writing this, says "is often described as a romance, a melodrama, a tragi-comedy or an escape play").