tragedian

Okonedo is herself a world-class tragedian, as she proved not so long ago in an “Antony and Cleopatra” at the National, opposite Ralph Fiennes and directed by Simon Godwin.

As Laurence, a Senegalese philosophy student on trial in France for killing her daughter, Guslagie Malanda provides a performance as cathartic as any Greek tragedian’s: so precise, so hard-boiled, so controlled in its torment that a monstrous crime opens onto unplumbed depths.

I had a hard time taking seriously the tragedian togas, masks and wigs — I felt like I was stuck watching classics majors putting on an overambitious, reworked “Oresteia,” and as fanciful as the costumes are, my interest waned.

She had a real tragedian spirit.

Just as the Greek tragedian zeroed in on moments of choice and free will in the plots of characters circumscribed by fate, so Giddens and Abels look for moments of freedom in the lives of characters denied this basic human right.