It’s a Monday morning, and Effie, swaggering about in leopard-print tights, her hair a huge, curly, dark-gold mop on top of her head, didn’t get a good high last night. “I need to get hammered,” she says.
In Shotgun Players’ “Iphigenia in Splott,” an award-winning 2015 one-woman drama by Welsh playwright Gary Owen, audiences get to know Effie quite intimately over the course of about 90 minutes.
Initially, she struts around the grim set. The two elevated platforms and half a broken wall, designed by Angrette McCloskey, have plenty of room underneath for her to wander, linger and hide. She’s doing her best to shock, with outrageous chatter and foul language. “No one can resist me — literally no one!” she boasts.
Owen had Iphigenia, the heroine of Euripides’ “Iphigenia in Aulis,” in mind when writing this modern-day quasi-version. It’s set in Splott, a poor, working-class section of Cardiff, Wales. Effie wanders the streets, hangs out in bars. Picks up guys for sex.
In the Greek tragedy, written around 408 BC and set just before the Trojan war, young Iphigenia is hand-picked by her father, Agamemnon, leader of the Greek troops, to be sacrificed in order to appease a goddess, which will then allow the Greek troops to eventually sack Troy. The clincher in the play comes at the end. Iphigenia, when she realizes what her father is plotting — and even though he changes his mind along the way — ultimately decides to sacrifice herself for the greater good.
While most audience members probably won’t ever be put to such a test, to sacrifice in any significant way to make the world better, Effie — after an ecstatic, life-changing sexual encounter with a disabled soldier whom she picks up at a pub — begins to see her life in a new light.
The tough, streetwise addict slowly morphs into — not a different person exactly — but to a woman with a deeper level of awareness of the socially neglected, poverty-stricken section of society in which she lives.
What really works in this Shotgun production is the compelling performance by Alicia Mason, who seems to be channeling just about every emotion known to woman. That, and the carefully balanced, tender direction by Shotgun company member Michelle Talgarow. The deeply intuitive Talgarow notes in the program, “Effie is a representative of every type of hustler I know and knew.”
Speaking with a heavy accent — Welsh, I presume, initially hard to understand but somehow becoming easier along the way — and striding past the audience to take the stage (exiting at the end that way, too); snatching a microphone on and off for emphasis; and utterly convincing as she develops a new self-awareness, Mason’s astonishing. This is a performance not to miss.
Shotgun Players’ “Iphigenia in Splott” runs through Aug. 23 on Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave., Berkeley. Tickets are $25 to $80 at shotgunplayers.org.
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