'Bloodsport: After Helen of Troy' review — Ava Pickett's fierce contemporary adaptation mercilessly dissects the patriarchy

Read our review of Bloodsport: After Helen of Troy, starring Michelle Dockery, now in performances at Theatre Royal Stratford East to 10 October.

In the wake of a Christopher Nolan Odyssey-fuelled summer, Ava Pickett’s new play inspired by Helen of Troy couldn’t come at a better time. It’s the women takes centre stage in this fierce contemporary adaptation, told with laugh-out-loud humour and gut-wrenching poignancy.

In artistic director Lisa Spirling’s directorial debut at Stratford East, Helen (Michelle Dockery) returns home after a ten-year war fought in her name. While many are celebrating peacetime, Helen’s best friend Cee (Laura Aikman) is less than pleased to see her, since her departure with a man she had just met resulted in ten years of brutal xenophobic and misogynistic violence.

The messenger-cum-narrator (Ethan Moorhouse) begins by placing the ancient story firmly in modern-day Essex, with incisive and occasionally scathing humour around Saturday nights, fake tan, going out with “no coat, no tights, no knickers”. No longer the face that launched a thousand ships, this Helen is the face that caused tens of pub brawls in her local.

At first sighting, Helen seems to have been brought back to peaceful domesticity, accompanied by (ex)husband Marcus (Jay Taylor) and brother-in-law, Cee’s husband, Mario (Gerard Monaco). They are welcomed by Cee into a perfectly beige living room (design by Polly Sullivan), immediately familiar with its Live Laugh Love-style wall decorations and curated family photos. Cee totters around nervously in her welcome-home dress and pink stilettos, while Dockery shows us a war-torn, traumatised Helen in blood-smeared silk pyjamas. But Nicola T. Chang's moody soundtrack creates the unsettling sense that more fighting is to come.

When the men disappear for a pint, Helen and Cee are left to discuss the parts they each played in the war. Dockery passionately conveys Helen's self-assured anger, while Aikman expresses hurt and confusion at her friend’s choices, and yet still has perfect comedic timing. The dialogue oscillates deftly between ribbing each other about memories of school and accusations of betrayal.

Much like Pickett’s celebrated debut play 1536, the patriarchy is mercilessly and brilliantly dissected in Bloodsport. There is no simple judgement of either Helen, who chose love over a miserable marriage, or Cee, who chose her family. An emotional scene with Helen’s daughter Hermione (Emma Monnickendam) demonstrates the very real price of mothers prioritising freedom, while Cee is reluctant to admit her husband’s role in the conflict.

The war, which has played out in riots and race-fuelled attacks across England, has clear, contemporary resonances, but they are subtly done. Similarly, the references to male violence are implicit, but ever-present. Monaco’s insidious Mario –the real heavyweight behind the civil war – switches to rage and physical aggression in the blink of an eye, with constant accusations levelled at women and so-called foreigners. Meanwhile the hardline, militaristic Dani (Maimuna Memon) has some of the funniest lines, delivered with deadpan brutality, and always in between puffs of her vape.

Guided by Moorhouse’s perceptive narrative soliloquys, where Pickett’s irreverent vision of the Greek gods is expanded on, Bloodsport is a shrewd analysis of how hatred grows, and the parts of society it ostracises.

Although the ending is so sudden it is almost anticlimactic, Bloodsport weaves in thousands of years’ worth of conspiracy theories and judgements of Helen. Is she a “slut demon” who caused the death of hundreds, or just “a woman who left”? Pickett’s perceptive play leaves us guessing.

Bloodsport: After Helen of Troy is at Theatre Royal Stratford East to 10 October.

Photo credit: Bloodsport: After Helen of Troy (Photos by Pamela Raith)