Murder in Argos: A Timeless Trial

'This is not an ancient play in modern dress. It is a timeless trial, presented to a modern jury.'

At the centre, a murder committed in Argos of the most treacherous kind. A community defined by its colonialism and militarism become disillusioned from the Trojan War. Infected with shame and taboo, they look to their leaders for how to exact justice for the crime - but justice itself is drawn into question.

Shifting through post-World War One British history, time seems to propel forwards. Yet the same characters are trapped in the same story, forced to play the same roles and subjected to the same rhetoric. We might be eager to remember the past, but are we doomed to repeat it?

Having never been performed on stage before, the script has sat in the archives of Somerville Library for decades, only now to be released for the public to read. Nicholson allows us to reflect upon the stories of the mythical past in the context of her own environment in the 1960’s, a world recently shaken by two world wars.

Pressingly urgent, Murder in Argos transports a moral that pierces from Classical Athens into the present day.

• Nov 11 - 7.30pm
• Nov 12 - 7pm
• Nov 13 - 2.30pm and 7pm
• Nov 14 - 7.30pm
• (Fri 12 Nov, 7pm: Pre-show discussion with Uncomfortable Oxford, delving into the history of the war monuments we pass by every day.)