While the emotional complexities remain, Van Hove’s high-octane makeover featuring unrelenting pyrotechnics and riveting performances is a visual epic

This immersive retelling of Greek tragedies is stylish and atmospheric but lacks narrative momentum and its scattered scenes can be frustratingly arcane

From James Joyce to Ali Smith and Chigozie Obioma, the archetypal stories of the ancients have inspired some of our best fiction

Aeschylus speaks directly to us in David Greig’s electrifying adaptation

Women have long been marginalised in the world of ancient texts, but female scholars and translators are finally having their say

This retelling of the tragedy of the house of Atreus is magnificently dramatic, but loses its way in Orestes’ wanderings

The prime minister may not know her Aeschylus, writes the novelist Tom McCarthy, but she has a duty to understand the basic concepts she invokes

In his new book, Matthew Wright analyses the remaining evidence of hundreds of Athenian texts that, packed with sex, magic and happy endings, would give a radically different impression of the genre

The new artistic director of Edinburgh’s Lyceum theatre explains how The Suppliant Women, Aeschylus’s 2,500-year-old play about a refugee crisis, offers a ‘profound statement on the purpose of theatre’

Directed by Dominic Hill, this four-hour epic of ambition and power is a sinewy reworking of Aeschylus that explodes into a cacophonous climax

The Almeida’s enthralling Oresteia is singled out by Lyn Gardner who, in no set order, chooses her other essential productions of the year

Ancient and modern clash in a production that juxtaposes a potent mythic past with a contemporary-styled and costumed present

How do you even begin to pick the world’s 101 greatest plays? The Guardian’s theatre critic explains how he approached this controversial task for his new book – and admits he is already having second thoughts