A critically acclaimed one-woman play that offers a fascinating new take on the Trojan War comes to the region next month. Performer & co-creator Deborah Pugh talks to What’s On about Beautiful Evil Things and explains what audiences can expect from the show...

Beautiful Evil Things, a critically acclaimed take on the Trojan War that views the epic tale through the eyes of decapitated gorgon Medusa, comes to Coventry’s Warwick Arts Centre next month.

But how do you distil a lengthy Greek tragedy, with a cast of thousands, into a one-woman show that tells the story from the perspective of a severed head?...

And, more importantly, why?

“There’s something incredibly appealing about condensing those huge, epic Greek tales and hundreds of characters down to one performer,” says Deborah (“Deb’s fine”) Pugh, the production’s effervescent performer and co-creator. “It makes it really, really rich and really, really exciting. You can just rip through these stories at a fantastic pace.”

Deb witnessed something similar a decade ago when Ad Infinitum, the theatre company she’s been a member of since 2007, put on a one-man version of The Odyssey performed by George Mann and directed by Nir Paldi, the company’s co-artistic directors.

“It was a fantastic, rich show to watch. And it felt like a really appealing world to delve back into, so we thought: Okay, George has done the boys, let’s have a look at what the girls have been up to.”

At first glance it appeared the answer was not very much beyond “a lot of weeping and wailing” according to Deb.

“What I loved about The Odyssey was that it was an adventure. He was fighting in a war, but you wanted to be him. It’s exciting! I just wanted to do something like that.”

Further research came to her aid in the form of Pandora’s Jar, a book by Natalie Haynes. Going back to the original Greek text, it viewed the females as characters with personalities, rather than foils to support their male counterparts. All roads also led back to Medusa, someone Deborah had initially dismissed as a snake-haired monster but who she came to realise was so very much more. After all, she was decapitated in her sleep - while pregnant - by a man she’d never met.

“We figured hers is the most infamous of female gazes, so what if we could see some of these well-trodden stories through Medusa’s eyes? What would be her take on it, and who would she focus on?”

It ought to be a moot point, what with Medusa having been decapitated, but that particular issue was overcome by creative interpretation of historical fact.

“Once her head has been chopped off, it’s helpfully gifted to Athena, who mounts it in the centre of a shield - so we realised that Medusa’s head would have been present throughout the Trojan War,” chuckles Deb.

“She’s watching everything at Athena and seeing what the Greeks and Trojans are getting up to, so she’s very well-placed to retell these stories.”

Medusa’s eyes witness the entire epic battle, but also pick out the women who might offer her some hope. Deb is happy to admit that her interpretation of the story is sympathetic to the supposedly wicked gorgon, as well as the previously one-dimensional female characters she came across during her research.

“Medusa was always interpreted by Victorian men as evil, when realistically she was just a woman who didn’t behave the way she was supposed to.

“My retelling is no less biased - this is how I wish to see myself positioned in the world. None of the paper-thin women I read about were recognisable as any of the women I know, so we’ve fleshed them out using the original texts, really lit a fire under them and made them human.”

Deb’s repeated use of the word “we” refers to co-creator George Mann. And she’s not always alone on stage in her one-woman show either, being regularly joined there by British Sign Language interpreter Kyra Pollitt, who is an integral part of proceedings on the nights she’s involved.

“It’s 100 per cent a performing role. She’s doing about five jobs all at once - she’s remarkable,” gushes Deb, who says having Kyra centre stage means hearing-impaired audience members can focus on the show rather than having to keep looking away to monitor the sign language.

“The company has a long history of working with deaf performers and creatives, and because our shows are so visually rich, and our first language is physical, it’s not a big leap to make it completely accessible for a deaf audience.”

The ‘physical language’ she refers to - which is very much Ad Infinitum’s calling card - is what brought her into the company’s orbit in the first place. Having trained at renowned physical theatre school École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris, she has carved out an impressive career as both performer and movement director.

Condensing the decade-long war and fall of Troy into a 75-minute play inevitably requires all the tools of her trade, as well as learning some new skills. She says plotting where to breathe has become crucial, as she’s required to speak before, after, and occasionally during bouts of leaping around.

“You need to get lung-fit and good at re-routing where your breath goes. I’ve been doing a lot of walking up and down stairs with heavy boxes [she’s just moved house], so that’s helped.”

The frantic pace of Beautiful Evil Things means it’s constantly driving to the next point in the narrative, with little time for detours - something that has led to some judicious editing of the original.

“These stories are called epics for a reason - every thread you pull can go off in 15 different directions. Even in the moment Medusa is decapitated, she gives birth from her neck to a winged horse and a golden giant. We need the audience to ignore that because we need the story to go in another direction. It’s still the Trojan War as you know it; we just follow a different thread.”

Deb likens the journey to a relay, with the baton being passed from woman to woman. This makes it potentially more palatable than trying to identify the numerous characters that come and go (“there’s about 12 that all begin with the letter P for a start”). However, she’s also devised a clever way to distinguish between them.

“This is where the physical language really supports everything. We work with gestural language - which is a friendly cousin of mime, but don’t let that put you off! In classic Greek text, each character would be introduced with an epithet - Achilles would be the fleet-footed one and so on - so we’ve created physical epithets. Every time a character pitches up, there’s a gesture that accompanies him. So even if you’re not picking up on the names, you’ll absolutely know who you’re dealing with. There’s no point trying to tell a story if people can’t understand it.”

Beautiful Evil Things shows at Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry, on Tuesday 14 & Wednesday 15 May.

By Steve Adams