Jean Racine’s noir tragedy doesn’t have a plot so much as an irresolvable situation. In the aftermath of the Trojan war, Andromaque, the widow of the defeated Hector, will do anything to save her son. They are imprisoned by King Pyrrhus, a pinstriped politician with a Sarko smile. He plans to wed her, even though he is engaged to Hermione, a kittenish princess who deals poorly with rejection. In Declan Donnellan’s taut, dynamic production for Cheek by Jowl, everyone hugs the walls as if shoved aside by pressured emotions. A fine French cast turns down Racine’s mighty rhetoric to a tense mutter. Nick Ormerod dresses everyone in post-war black. Andromaque, eyes sore with crying, hurtles urgently round the bare stage, while the trim Hermione deploys her immaculate social smile and scalding amour-propre. Although the passions are thunderous, they also seem surprisingly infantile: Racine’s characters rarely look beyond need, pique and tantrum. All live out their parents’ destinies — none more so than Andromaque’s son, the wordless pivot of the action, pulled about in a tug of love and hate. So much talk can only end in a blood bath. The moral? You always hurt the one you love, if only to get their attention.

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