Trojan Women

While the play stayed relatively loyal to the book version of Trojan Women, certain performing tools and plot changes served to change the mood into a more dramatic version of the original. The passion, despair, and raw emotional force of the characters was enhanced in the performance, which can be expected for a modern form of entertainment. I believe this was an almost necessary adaptation for the play, and one that could easily fit in the context of the book. While Hecuba's suffering and screams are not as explicitly described, her despair and loss is more than enough to assume that she is an emotional wreck. Perhaps the powerful moments of terrifying grief in the play were bringing out what the play intended and could not so easily portray. That being said, Hecuba's portrayal was the most consistent with the books, while other characters were forcefully changed to match the mood of grief. For example, a sad yet calm, collected, and rational Cassandra was adapted into a childish, insane, blabbering fool for the play. The change certainly affected the mood of the play, evolving it towards a more dramatic and eventful form of entertainment, but not adhering to the book's description of Cassandra. An even more powerful and blatant change in the plot was the death of Astyanax. Having Andromache (who had a much larger role in the play) kill her son was a poorly disguised attempt at spicing up the emotions of the original book. It is a dramatic plot twist that highlights the grief of all the Trojan women, but takes away from the intention of the original play. The suffering of Troy and the foreboding doom upon the heartless Greeks was a theme that ultimately took a back seat to the grief and emotional destruction of the women.