If you don’t mind your Greek drama being fiddled with, then The Classic Stage Company’s production of An Oresteia is a gift from the theater gods. With Anne Carson’s au courant translation, the trio of plays-- Aiskhylos’ Agamemnon, Sophocles Elektra, and Euripides Orestes--takes on vivacious new life and pertinence. Even though some purists may wince at some of Carson’s coinages (like “dayvisible” and “godaccomplished”), the total effect is exhilarating. Presented on 2 separate nights (Part I: Agamemnon & Elektra; Part II: Orestes) or as a 5 hour marathon on weekends, An Oresteia may be tough on your derriere, but it’s a meaningful as well as an exciting experience.

Incidentally, it’s a good investment of your time to read (or thumb through) Anne Carson’s newly-published translation, which is available for purchase at the Classic Stage Company lobby during intermissions. Carson is a distinguished poet and classicist, and her nonfoundational translation is to be relished like a plate of moussaka accompanied with a good glass of wine. This modern version reconciles the lofty language of the Greek classics with our plain English speech. No, the language isn’t entirely homogenized from cover to cover. Even so, you’ll admire her personal verve and contemporary spin on the ancient sins of the House of Atreus.

An Oresteia (not to be confused with the traditional The Oresteia) begins with Aiskhylos’ Agamemnon. As directed by Brian Kulick and Gisela Cardenas, this production is a refreshing exception to the stiff exercises we usually witness onstage. Instead of offering us pretty patterns of words without clear meaning or dramatic impact, we get a real display of passionate outpourings and convincing character development from the ensemble.

All the actors in Agamemnon vociferate a great deal, which helps to give their figures the necessary largeness of dimension. Raising the actor above workaday realism is essential to Greek drama, and fortunately the actors in the opening piece (and the other 2 plays in An Oresteia) generally adhere to this classical idea.

Agamemnon is set at King Agamemnon’s palace. But don’t expect to see any luxurious royal trappings. The King has been gone for 10 years, and his palace is conspicuously disintegrating. Ricardo Hernandez’s stripped-down set—an unpainted wooden wall streaked with blood—immediately suggests a tragic and violent atmosphere. And it forces us to anticipate what is soon enough to be played out in real time.

The action begins with a Watchmen (Christopher McCann) reporting on the dull grind of life at King Agamemnon’s palace. But his tone suddenly shifts as he learns of Agamemnon’s hard-won victory at Troy. The good news is taken up by Agamemnon’s wife, Klytaimestra (the superb Stephanie Roth Haberle), whose thousand mile relay of beacons confirms the fall of Troy. To be sure, Klytaimnestra dominates each character in the story, save the prophet Kassandra (Doan Ly). Because the Trojan princess doesn’t speak Greek, she possesses the only weapon that effectively works against Klytaimestra: silence.

Not surprisingly, the Chorus provides the audience with most of the juicy backstories of the House of Atreus. We learn, for example, how the power-hungry Agamemnon coldly murdered his innocent young daughter Iphigenia at Aulis, his perverted rationale being to gain the gods’ favor for his future military excursions against Troy. Adding more texture to the plot, the Chorus gives us sizzling facts about Helen, the runaway bride of Menelaos and the mistress of Paris. What ultimately clinches the drama, however, is Klytaimestra’s vengeful murder of her husband Agamemnon. No doubt this is an eye-for-an-eye moral universe, and nobody escapes whipping.

Things heat up even more in Sophocles Elektra. The eponymous Elektra (Annika Boras) is a firebrand of a character, her name literally meaning “bedless, unwed, unmarriageable.” Annika Boras’s feisty Elektra is spot on, and Mickey Solis’s Orestes complements her at every twist and turn of the plot. True to the nature of Greek drama, the play’s language is full of ambiguities, double negatives, and of course Elektra’s excessive grief (“I cannot not grieve.”) Though the play offers little comfort, the recognition scene between Elektra and Orestes possesses real pathos. The scene has always been a hard nut to crack, with the supposedly dead Orestes coming back to miraculous life. Under the richly-nuanced direction of Brian Kulick and Gisela Cardenas, this mysterious scene works almost like an impressionistic painting, blurring the boundaries between truth and lies. The biggest gasp from the audience, however, followed one of Elektra’s inflammatory retorts to her mother Klytaimestra. Elektra nearly spits out fire with her syllables: “I don’t think of you as a mother at all. You are some sort of punishment cage locked around my life.” Yes, Elektra is insane, consumed by her own anger.

Euripedes Orestes is the capstone of the trio. Though the story strangely lags in the opening scene--Orestes is in a funk after murdering his mother Klytaimestra--Carson’s elastic translation allows the narrative to unknot itself, and move at a steady pace. Director Paul Lazar brings a light comic touch to the play, which serves to balance the emotive excesses of the former 2 plays. The encounters between Orestes (Mickey Solis) and Menelaos (Steve Mellor) generate the most laughs, pushing the myth intentionally into mockery. It even crosses into farce at times, especially when Orestes and Menelaos start discussing the wayward Helen (played by the cross-dressing David Neumann). But the moment in the play that gets you where you live belongs to Orestes. He is speaking to his friend Pylades (Jess Barbagallo) about what he has learned through hard experience with his feuding family. Or as he simply puts it: “There’s an old saying—a good friend is worth ten thousand relatives.” And who would argue?

In spite of the sometimes flippant language in Carson’s translation, the innovations of staging, and the hip modern dress (Oana Botez-Ban), the trio of plays in An Oresteia is Greek to the core. It forces us to accept the tragic destiny of the characters, and say like the ancients once did: It must be so.

An Oresteia at The Classic Stage Company, at 136 E. 13^th Street.
Ticket prices vary, starting at $30. Marathon ticket prices, starting at $60.
For tickets and information, visit http://www.classicstage.org or call (866)811-4111, or (212) 352-3101, or visit the CSC box office at 136 E. 13^th Street, Monday through Friday 12pm to 6pm.