The Bunker Trilogy: Agamemnon

Aeschylus' family tragedy of betrayal and revenge is ingeniously packed into Jethro Compton's cordite-scorched Bunker. The Belt Up founder brings his usual eye for blistering design to this WW1 re-imagining, working from a whip smart script by his old partner in crime Jamie Wilkes. This is no 'modern dress' paint job, but an entirely new and often superb production that riffs cleverly on the themes of absence, loyalty and the corrupting qualities of war.

Holed up in a shell-blasted bunker, Agamemnon is feverishly pursued by visions of the home life he has left behind in England. We see his courtship with the glowing Clytemnestra, his resented departure for the frontline, and the gradual incineration of everything he had to go back to.

The strains of Aeschylus take time to emerge, increasing the pleasure when what has previously presented itself as a shrewd war drama winds towards its horrific conclusion. There are echoes of Journey's End in the surprising flashes of humour, and its emotional narrative is impressively focused and expressed with great structural originality.

Reality and hallucination bleed woozily into one another, until it's unclear which narrative is the dream and which the living nightmare. Compton's design and direction are equally exceptional, and James Marlowe leads a powerful cast. Agamemnon sees the prolific but patchy Compton at the top of his game, and makes future trips to the gloomy Bunker to complete his ambitious trilogy an absolute must.