Stratford Festival 2025/Ransacking Troy by Erin Shields, directed by Jackie Maxwell, Tom Patterson Theatre, closes Sept. 28.
Irene Poole as Clytemnestra and Maev Beatty as Penelope
Ransacking Troy
Photo: David Hou
Take two of the best female actors in the country, one of the most provocative female playwrights, and one of the most admired female directors – put them all together and you get an absolutely stupendous production.
And that is exactly what the world premiere of Ransacking Troy is –a scintillating skewering of man-history that makes you think twice about what you ever thought you knew about the Trojan War.
What playwright Erin Shields has done is take the Trojan War and, without changing history, insert the women into the centre of the narrative —the wives of the Greek men who’ve been missing for ten years as the war drags on. They’re desperate to stop the war and get their men back, and leading the charge is Penelope (Maev Beatty), wife of Odysseus. Her mission? Convince Clytemnestra (Irene Poole), wife of Agamemnon, to join her cause. And she knows that if she can get Clytemnestra, others will follow.
The first half follows Penelope’s journey—trying to find a ship, then traveling from island to island gathering wives. What director Jackie Maxwell has done with Judith Bowden’s simple, yet evocative design is brilliant. On the Tom Patterson stage, nine women sit on long wooden benches and mind the act of rowing. Above them, sail-like cloth suggests movement and wind. With the barest of means, Maxwell and Bowden have created a ship and we are with the women on their voyage.
The dynamics between the women are anything but easy. There’s tension, conflict, and power struggles. This is not a simple sisterhood. The heart of the piece is the chemistry between Penelope and Clytemnestra – Beatty and Poole, both successors to Martha Henry’s torch in the acting game. Two titans of Canadian theatre sparring, persuading, resisting, aligning. The sparks fly.
After many adventures, the women eventually reach Troy, where ultimately they pose as goddesses—Clytemnestra and Penelope entering the tent of the Greek leaders. The men, stunned by the sight of women who look exactly like their wives, believe them divine. The women’s aim is peace—and they do get the Greek generals to agree to peace, but what follows, of course, is history: the Trojan Horse, the ransacking of Troy, the ruin of the city. Their intervention brings not peace, but annihilation.
In one unforgettable earlier scene, the women sneak into Helen’s palace. Helen, played with incandescent presence by Sara Topham, descends bathed in golden light, every inch the goddess of beauty. She delivers a defiant monologue: she doesn’t deny her beauty—in fact, she admits it’s her only weapon, her only way to survive in a world run by men. The writing is razor sharp, and Topham commands the moment.
And Helen’s daughter Hermione (Marissa Orjalo), raised in Clytemnestra’s court, adds yet another layer to this intergenerational portrait of women shaped—and warped—by war.
The encounters that the Greek women have with the Trojan women certainly spark interest, and it is also delicious when they get to play their own husbands or male relatives in the tent of the Greek generals.
One important running theme is Clytemnestra’s obsession about her daughter Iphigenia who was sacrificed by her father Agamemnon in order to get a favourable wind to sail to Troy. This terrible sacrifice rears its head many times throughout the play and is perhaps the most egregious symbol of the patriarchy.
What is so moving is the fleeting empowerment these women achieve. For a brief, shining moment, they give themselves agency, stepping out of the roles they’ve been assigned, but by the end, as history barrels forward, they return to there assigned place inthe women’s chambers. All but one. Clytemnestra says she will stay and wait outside for Agamemnon. We all know what that means. Blood and retribution await in the House of Atreus.
Ransacking Troy is haunting, sharp, and fiercely female. A remarkable work by Erin Shields and an unforgettable production from Maxwell and the women.