Ancient wonder women take centre stage at Liverpool Everyman

The lives of women painted as villains or victims in Greek mythology are revisited in an acclaimed one-woman show heading for the Liverpool Everyman next week.

Beautiful Evil Things, described as ‘a fierce, funny take on female stories throughout history that have been forgotten, distorted or erased’, comes to the Hope Street theatre on March 14 and 15 as part of a spring tour.

The Ad Infinitum theatre company production, co-created by Deborah Pugh (who also stars) and Liverpool-born director George Mann, follows its award-winning one-man show Odyssey which reinvented Homer’s famous Greek myth.

A bodiless head on the goddess Athena’s shield, the snake-haired Medusa watches over the Battle of Troy, focusing on queens and prophets whose stories have been cast in the worst possible light.

Casting Medusa as an archivist setting the record straight, history is retold with full nuance and colour as seen through a female gaze, and through the most powerful gaze in mythology.

In forgotten and alternative stories about them, Iphigenia wasn’t the first child of Clytemnestra to be murdered by Agamemnon, Cassandra’s abilities were learned rather than god-given, Amazonian Queen Penthesilea wasn’t killed by Achilles, and Medusa was a protector of the ancient world.

Beautiful Evil Things asks why the versions of the stories we know about these women are the most damning ones.

Pugh says: "The making of Beautiful Evil Things has been a great opportunity to scrutinise some well-worn classics and thoroughly interrogate their familiar telling and translations. When the much-maligned Medusa, monstrous social outcast, throws her infamous gaze across the events of the Trojan War she sees things a little differently.

“She’s little time for gods and heroes, having fallen foul of them both. Instead, she's drawn to the excluded, the ignored and the demonised, unearthing and reframing the tales of some truly phenomenal ancient wonder women; each as flawed, fearless and front-footed as their male counterparts, each stood strong and centre in their own story."

The 75-minute show is suitable for those aged 12 and up.

Beautiful Evil Things is at the Liverpool Everyman on March 14-15. Tickets HERE

Top: Deborah Pugh in Beautiful Evil Things. Photo by Camilla Adams.