—Originally published February 6, 2017—
Meet the Hanslick Girls: Gwen, Eleanor and Dania. Created by writer Zach Barr, they are a trio of Northwestern students who always go to see plays together. They may not have the same opinions, but their conversations tend to make for an entertaining read. Recently, the Girls saw the Wirtz Center’s stage premiere of Simon Scardifield’s “Agamemnon” adaptation. Let’s hear what they had to say on their way back from the theater…
As the lights slowly rose in the Josephine Louis Theatre, Gwen stared hard at the location on the ground where the naked, bleeding Sean Gundersen had laid not twenty seconds earlier, and which was now vacant. The darkness of the final blackout had seemed so sudden, and so total, that she had been unable to trace if any actors stayed onstage during the blackout, or whether Gundersen had been whisked offstage to don the requisite robe for modesty during his bow.
The lights finally reached the level they had begun at, dimly illuminating the clouds of fog and haze floating in from the stage’s exposed wings. Not an actor was in sight. Gwen raised an eyebrow. She had basically understood the play’s ending, even if the pace had dropped slightly after Cassandra’s death, and in tying it to the overall message she was gleaning from it…
The Hanslick Girls 