Trojan Barbie presented a tall order. A modern adaptation of Euripides’ Trojan Women, Christine Evans’ play tackled the eternal yet strangely contemporary themes of war, loss, compassion, alienation, and ignorance, all within the setting of a women’s refugee camp. The strengths of the play were its weaknesses – the characters and the story were of epic proportions, providing several moments in which audience members visibly flinched, covering their eyes and gasping. However, the plot itself, as anyone who has read the play can attest to, is slow-moving, and the measured pace of the production dimmed the effect of the performance.   

The stage loomed over the audience – a large balcony was backlit, and the stage fenced in by cages and boxes, which soon filled with dirtied and solemn-looking women. Dozens of blonde Barbie dolls hung from the ceiling, dangling forlornly throughout the production. The use of torches to create spotlighting was notable throughout the production, effectively creating tension and drawing attention to climatic moments.

The acting was universally outstanding. It’s difficult to single out individual actors because the cast as a whole were astoundingly strong. Emma Corrin as Cassandra gave one of the best performances that I have ever seen. She portrayed a character driven to the brink of madness by a tragic past. She bounced around the stage, exuberant and yet tragic, and her monologue was captivating; dark, haunting, thrilling, exciting, she had the audience on tenterhooks to see what she would throw at us next.

Alice Carlill was a fantastically charismatic Polly X. She maintained a childlike, endearing air whilst successfully conveying a complex and troubled character. Her scenes stood out, so it was frustrating that we couldn’t follow her character’s journey through to the very end. An unavoidable element of both the original play and this adaptation is that most of the action takes place off-stage and is recounted by messengers. This meant that the pace of the production slowed; brilliant actors were trapped in periods of long dialogue which sometimes became monotonous.

One element of the play which worked excellently was the integration of scenes referencing modern-day Britain. Lucy Dickson was perfectly cast as Lotte, a bubbly and eccentric English woman who travels on a singles holiday to Troy for sun and hot men, and gets caught up in the refugee camp. Dickinson was hilarious; her timing and facial expressions were spot-on. She gave us a character who was self-absorbed, ignorant and frivolous, but remained thoroughly likeable. We empathised with her because she reminded us of ourselves; she was sympathetic to the plight of the refugees, but ultimately caught up in her own life, writing the episode off as an interesting experience.

The production was fantastic in conveying the problems with our dissociation with events in Syria and refugee camps, giving a moving and powerful account of the effects of war. The choice of play was ambitious, and the result was experimental, thought-provoking, and exposed some amazing acting. However, the problem was that the plot of the play simply lacked lustre; it was set in a refugee camp in which the main activity of the occupants was to wait to hear recounts of events which were happening outside the camp. It was only too easy for scenes to blur into one-another and for the performance to lose momentum. Perhaps the goal was simply too ambitious for a student-production.