The classic Greek anti-war play The Trojan Women by Euripides of 415 BC wasn't depicting an imaginary event. Audiences would have recognised it as a protest against the atrocities committed by Greece on the island of Melos.
The performers of Badminton School in their well-performed, thoughtful play After Troy demonstrate the story's contemporary relevance by shifting between short scenes featuring its characters with scenes from more recent wars.
Six women dressed in black enter a stage on which six chairs stand against a black-curtained backdrop. A narrator steps forward from the darkness holding a lit candle to speak about the threads that link us in the tapestry of life.
Soon we are into the threads that link us to the women prisoners of Troy. A Greek guard tells Andromache that her young son is to die by being thrown from the city walls. Honey Wicks as Andromache gives an emotionally powerful, very moving response.
The scene soon shifts to Nada (Connor Jones) speaking to Amir during the period of the 1990s massacre of Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica. Back we return to a defeated Troy where Helen, who had left a husband for the Trojan man Paris whom she loved, is being told she will be returned against her will to those who have marital rights over her.
Next comes a refugee camp of Rohingya people in the wake of the massacre in the 21st century by the military of Myanmar, where the woman Maya speaks of the solidarity she has experienced from others saying, “I refuse to be silent, to be forgotten by history.”
Our last modern stopping point is the horror of the Rwanda massacre, where friends suddenly became enemies. A woman insists that she is more than a refugee, arguing that we should never turn a blind eye to injustice.
Towards the end of the play, we see Honor Gore giving a strong, angry performance as Cassandra refusing to be simply a trophy of war.
The words of defiance link to the closing, hopeful moments of the show where we are reminded that each of us, each thread “has the power to change the world.”