Hecuba
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The Queen of Troy is now a prisoner of war. Her children are brutally slaughtered: one sacrificed on the tomb of a victorious killer, the other savaged for a pot of gold. The brutalities of war leave a terrible and lasting scar.
Revenge must be acted out.
Violence reaps violence...
No one is left untouched...
When all is lost, what more is there to lose?
This rarely staged Greek Classic lays bare the tragic effect of war on women, children, and the men who perpetrate it. Two and a half thousand years after Euripides wrote this play, the world still seeks to solve its conflicts through means of invasion, incarceration and death. As this is written, statistics show that in the 20th Century alone, between 130 and 142 million people lost their lives as a direct result of conflict. More than 90% of casualties were civilian and over half of these were children (figures taken from Peace Pledge Union).
Euripides provides no glib answers, but a dramatic and timeless story that begs us to question the consequences of our warring actions and leads us to ponder what the alternatives may be.