Women of Troy/Hecuba/Helen: Three Plays

Kenneth McLeish’s stunning translations of three plays exploring the Trojan War, by one of the great Athenian dramatists. Each play shows the aftermath of war from a different standpoint. Women of Troy is set amongst a group of captives waiting to be shipped from Troy as slaves – Queen Hecuba is their comforter but in Hecuba she is driven to the edge of insanity by her own great personal loss. Helen takes place seven years after the end of the War. In Egypt – treated as a backwater, far from ‘real’ events – Helen waits anxiously for her husband Menelaus to rescue her. One of the greatest and most influential of the Greek tragedians, Euripides, is said to have produced 92 plays, the first of which appeared in 455BC.