Aeschylus, they say, was killed when an eagle, mistaking his bald head for a smooth, shell-cracking rock, dropped a tortoise on him. Ever since then translators have been dropping translations on the head of his plays with comparably fatal results.

Rush Rehm’s version of The Oresteia (Hawthorn Press, $4.95 pb, 144 pp) brought to the Pram Factory a rarely attempted piece of theatre – the whole of the only surviving trilogy of Greek tragedies, translated not only for the theatre but in and by the theatre. The acting text was influenced by the Director James McCaughey and by the actors involved in the project. In a sense this was the same as working on a brand new play where every line has to be tested for delivery and for action.