Miranda Curnew
posted 3 May 2005

Two years ago these two monologues opened at the Latchmere as the first bombs fell on Baghdad, now they return for an impressive tour with a week at the Riverside Studios. They are as different as can be - one set in Athens after the siege of Troy, the other in the pre-war Iraq; one (apparently) the tale of an officer's wife, the other of an ex-conscripted soldier; one in a luxurious bathroom, the other in a deserted street. Yet together they tell us of the suffering inflicted upon individuals by needless war, reinforcing each other extremely successfully.

In Gifts of War by Fraser Grace, few of the Greek soldiers have returned to the mainland, but their women folk are celebrating their victory and imminent return. We meet Nemesis, the beautiful new girl in town who is living it up with the generals' wives. But we soon learn that she is harbouring a deadly secret and all her giggling over cocktails does little to disguise the fish-out-of-water tale in which our interlocutress changes from foreign aristocrat to victim of war. Jasmine Hyde gives a compelling, touching performance - drunk, abused and diseased, she portrays a character with the most extraordinary resilience and strength.

Fraser Grace has dramatised an ancient tale to demonstrate very modern day concerns with real insight. The murderous victory at Troy is matched by the bullying and cruelty of the women back in Greece. The 'civilised' Greeks with their conviction that the Trojans are fanatics provide an eerie comparison with 21st century Westerners' misconceptions of Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

His writing is packed full of irony ('it's all very democratic' says Nemesis of the game in which she is used as a love toy by the Athenian women; 'Seriously, any Greek would kill for bones like yours' Penelope here, all too prophetic) and the language is a clever mixture of modern colloquialism and echoes of ancient Greek ('Odysseus-the-nimble-witted').

Naomi Wallace's monologue The Retreating World also packs a real emotional punch - Ali (Kamaal Hussain), a young, intelligent Iraqi with a delightful command of English and a real love of ornithology, takes us through a tragi-comic catalogue of the friends, family and birds who have died, have been killed, or have been parted with through the regime of US embargoes and its devastating effects on the country which he tenderly remembers as 'the land of dates'.

These two monologues together reflect the National Theatre's juxtaposition of Hare's Stuff Happens with Iphigenia at Aulis last year - Greek tragedy (and Grace's monologue is certainly one) is so elemental that its themes continue to resonate. It's all just a little bit of history repeating - we are still human and though the setting may change we still fight wars for our gods, for money, for oil. We still feel the horror of unnecessary bloodshed and share the jubilation of victory. The two monologues work well together because they are both emotional responses to war. Not great politics, no soldiers, only the stories of how death and destruction affect innocent bystanders. The foreboding warning of the first play is only confirmed by the second - man hands on misery to man.

Touring nationally till 14 May 2005