Theater: Joan Weill Center for Dance / 405 West 55th Street, New York, NY, 10019
MoLoRa, originally presented at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg, marks South African playwright and director Yael Farber's first New York production since her acclaimed staging of Amajuba: Like Doves We Rise which was a smash hit at Culture Project in 2005. Like Amajuba, MoLoRa fuses a timely narrative with a specific musical world to create an event of extraordinary theatricality.
Set after the fall of apartheid, Farber's MoLoRa reimagines the ancient Greek Oresteia to tell the story of her own country's painful and extraordinary transition to democracy. As Klytemnestra and Elektra--mother and daughter, perpetrator and victim--sit to face each other in an open hearing, MoLoRa reenacts a watershed moment in world history, illuminating the universal and excruciating choice for any victim: to seek revenge or choose forgiveness.
July 7, 2011: The Web site for “MoLoRa,” a sporadically riveting take on Aeschylus by the South African playwright and director Yael Farber, poses this question when it spotlights this critical blurb: “Harrowing almost beyond endurance.” Granted, the sight of a woman drowning, burning and suffocating her own daughter arguably benefits from some preparation. But who goes to Greek tragedy expecting escapism?
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