Fired up again

WHEN IT comes to pursuing the bad guys, few actors move mountains like Tyne Daly. For years on television she huffed and puffed after crooks as a New York City cop on "Cagney & Lacey." More recently, as a social worker on "Judging Amy," she battled for needy children while making sure her own gavel-pounding daughter never lost sight of what was really at stake in her courtroom. But playing Clytaemnestra in the Getty Villa's new staging of Aeschylus’ “Agamemnon” brings this righteous fury to what can confidently be called its tragic apex.

In the midst of a recent late afternoon rehearsal at the Villa's Roman paradise near Malibu, Daly took a break to talk about her latest challenge: transforming one of literature's archetypal female villains -- an adulterous wife who ruthlessly stabs her royal husband to death -- into a woman hounded by a grievous loss and obsessed with retribution.

"Homer didn't give Clytaemnestra a break," Daly says, her eyes ablaze with ancient texts and modern interpretation. "He never even mentions the fact that her child had been sacrificed to get this war in Troy going."

Aeschylus, on the other hand, provides what Daly calls "a compelling motive" for the murder of King Agamemnon (played here by Delroy Lindo). As she explains it, Clytaemnestra is charged with "an assignment by the gods" to punish the man who killed her daughter Iphigenia, and this treacherously plotting mother won't rest until the crime has been religiously avenged.

No wonder Daly, who has witnessed more than her share of TV homicides, refers to this first part of Aeschylus' "Oresteia" trilogy as a "barnburner." Eager as she is to explore Clytaemnestra's neglected humanity, the crackling tension of the tale visibly thrills her.

The production, which opens Thursday at the Villa's outdoor Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman Theater under the direction of Stephen Wadsworth, strives for clarity while avoiding melodramatic simplification. The goal is admirable, but this dense poetic tragedy from 458 BC has a stylistic remoteness that has been exceedingly difficult to figure out on the contemporary stage.

Wadsworth says he has adapted Robert Fagles' translation not to diminish the play's archaic strangeness but to make its narrative paths more accessible. "Aeschylus presumed a tremendous knowledge of the subtleties of the back story in the Athenian theatergoing public, which we do not have," explains Wadsworth, whose approach (in addition to sorting out the family meshugas) offers a new lens through which to view Clytaemnestra more sympathetically.