Book description
Seven years have passed since the end of the Trojan War and
Menelaus, King of Sparta and husband to Helen, is making his slow and
painful way home. When his ship is wrecked on the coast of Egypt he
stumbles upon what seems to be his wife lingering outside the royal
palace. But if this is the real Helen, who was the beautiful woman
stolen by Paris, for whom all Greece took up arms? Did Troy fall for
nothing? Has it all been some god's idea of a joke? Frank McGuinness's
version of Euripides' Helen premiered at Shakespeare's Globe, London,
in August, 2009.
Frank McGuinness was born in Buncrana, Co. Donegal, and now lives in
Dublin and lectures in English at University College Dublin. His plays
include: The Factory Girls (Abbey Theatre, Dublin, 1982), Baglady
(Abbey, 1985), Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme
(Abbey, 1985; Hampstead Theatre, London, 1986), Innocence (Gate Theatre,
Dublin, 1986), Carthaginians (Abbey, 1988; Hampstead, 1989), Mary and
Lizzie (RSC, 1989), The Bread Man (Gate, 1991), Someone Who'll Watch
Over Me (Hampstead, West End and Broadway, 1992), The Bird Sanctuary
(Abbey, 1994), Mutabilitie (NT, 1997), Dolly West's Kitchen (Abbey,
1999; Old Vic, 2000), Gates of Gold (Gate, 2002), Speaking Like Magpies
(Swan, Stratford, 2005) and There Came a Gypsy Riding (Almeida, London,
2007). His widely performed versions include Ibsen's Rosmersholm (1987),
Peer Gynt (1988), Chekhov's Three Sisters (1990), Lorca's Yerma (1987),
Brecht's The Threepenny Opera (1991), Hedda Gabler (1994), Uncle Vanya
(1995), A Doll's House (1997), The Caucasian Chalk Circle (1997),
Sophocles' Electra (1998), Ostrovsky's The Storm (1998), Strindberg's
Miss Julie (2000), Euripides' Hecuba (2004), Racine's Phaedra (2006),
Ibsen's The Lady from the Sea (2008) and Sophocles' Oedipus (2008).
