The Cure at Troy

Kevin Osborne directs The Cure at Troy, written by Nobel Prize winner Seamus Heaney. The play is Heaney’s poetic translation of Sophocles’ tragedy Philoctetes. It narrows the dramatic focus to one solitary individual, in fact to tne critical moment in his life, his refusal to yield to time and circumstance. The past events, which led up to the moment of decision, are presented economically in a highly dramatic prologue; the future is left blank. The action of the Sophoclean hero is thus isolated in time as he himself is isolated in human society. The hero is marooned on a desert island; he makes his deliberate defiance absolutely alone, ignoring or often rejecting, with scorn and anger the warnings of his friends and the threats of his enemies.