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Over the course of its two-decade history, MetroStage has built a sturdy reputation for presenting contemporary plays and musicals and featuring emerging playwrights, leaving the classics to others. That standing is not likely to change with the company's current production of Sophocles' Electra: Despite the ancient Greek pedigree, the compelling, emotionally satisfying production is very much of this moment.

For MetroStage's first foray into the works of the ancient Greeks, producing artistic director Carolyn Griffin chose the streamlined adaptation of Electra that Frank McGuinness created for a West End production and then brought to Broadway to significant acclaim in 1998. McGuinness has said that his version of Sophocles' tale of revenge was inspired by the violent civil war in the Balkans. Cut down to 90 minutes and transposed into generally contemporary speech, the play as adapted by McGuinness reminds us that a direct connection can be made between the ravaged culture that Sophocles wrote about two millennia ago and current events.

As theater, Electra is first and foremost the Olympics of acting; the leading role a challenge that many actors may relish but that only the best can meet. MetroStage's production seems to have had its genesis in the availability and the desire of Jennifer Mendenhall for the part. The Helen Hayes Award winner notes in her program bio that she is "ferociously happy" to return to MetroStage to portray Electra; that ferocity is evident onstage as she attacks the plum role with gusto, not quite chewing the scenery but certainly gumming it a bit. There's a lot for her to sink her teeth into: Electra rages against her mistreatment in her familial home, waiting for the return of her brother Orestes to avenge the death of her father at the hands of Aegisthus , who has since wed Electra's widowed mother Clytemnestra. The obsessed Electra runs the full gamut of emotions from rage to grief, with occasional moments of doubt and despair as well as a few flourishes of triumph.

Director Michael Russotto has choreographed significant movement for Mendenhall. Wearing the ragged remnants of military clothing, her face grimy, she's frequently striding up and down the front steps of the Greek-temple-like home or leaping over the piles of junk cluttering the metal-and-barbed-wire fence that circles the estate. An electronic ankle bracelet monitors her every move, and when she ventures too near the gate in the fence, it slams shut to the accompaniment of ear-splitting alarms and flashing red lights. Though the gate confines Electra, it eventually plays a major role in her liberation, thanks to a deft bit of staging by Russotto. Throughout, Mendenhall avoids the constant state of near hysteria that all too often marks performances of this role and exhausts an audience.

The only overacting in the production comes whenever mention is made of Clytemnestra, sending Mendenhall's Electra into paroxysms. This becomes understandable when Clytemnestra finally makes her appearance. McGinn's manipulative widow presents a startling contrast to her emotionally frazzled daughter: tall, regal, and coolly imperious in manner, she's a lovely vision in a bright turquoise top and white Capri pants (in contrast to the dark, muted colors worn by the rest of the cast), with a knife snugly attached to her designer belt. The scenes between Electra and Clytemnestra are the heart of this production -- more illuminating than Electra's reunion with Orestes -- and McGinn's striking performance makes her character's downfall stunning.

Feldman turns in a strong, nuanced performance as Orestes, and Rana Kay offers an intriguing characterization of Chrysothemis: She plays her as an ingénue with an unexpected spine of steel, thereby adding dimension to the role. The chorus has been reduced to three women representing youth, middle age, and old age. James Kronzer's set contrasts the bright, clean estate with the grimy world that is encroaching upon it. The metal fence topped with barbed wire bespeaks omnipresent violence, while the debris surrounding the house signifies the crumbling of the dynasty within.

Born in 495 B.C. about a mile northwest of Athens, Sophocles was to become one of the great playwrights of the golden age. The son of a wealthy merchant, he would enjoy all the comforts of a thriving Greek empire. He studied all of the arts. By the age of sixteen, he was already known for his beauty and grace and was chosen to lead a choir of boys at a celebration of the victory of Salamis. Twelve years later, his studies complete, he was ready to compete in the City Dionysia--a festival held every year at the Theatre of Dionysus in which new plays were presented.
In his first competition, Sophocles took first prize--defeating none other thanAeschylus himself. More than 120 plays were to follow. He would go on to win eighteen first prizes, and he would never fail to take at least second.
An accomplished actor, Sophocles performed in many of his own plays. In theNausicaa or The Women Washing Clothes, he performed a juggling act that so fascinated his audience it was the talk of Athens for many years. However, the young athenian's voice was comparatively weak, and eventually he would give up his acting career to pursue other ventures.
In addition to his theatrical duties, Sophocles served for many years as an ordained priest in the service of two local heroes--Alcon and Asclepius, the god of medicine. He also served on the Board of Generals, a committee that administered civil and military affairs in Athens, and for a time he was director of the Treasury, controlling the funds of the association of states known as the Delian Confederacy.
One of the great innovators of the theatre, he was the first to add a third actor. He also abolished the trilogic form. Aeschylus, for example, had used three tragedies to tell a single story. Sophocles chose to make each tragedy a complete entity in itself--as a result, he had to pack all of his action into the shorter form, and this clearly offered greater dramatic possibilities. Many authorities also credit him with the invention of scene-painting and periaktoi or painted prisms.
Of Sophocles' more than 120 plays, only seven have survived in their entirety. Of these, Oedipus the King is generally considered his greatest work. This tragedy of fate explores the depths of modern psycho-analysis as Oedipus unwittingly kills his father and marries his mother in an attempt to avoid the very prophecy he ultimately fulfills. A masterful work of plot and suspense, Oedipus the King is often heralded as a "perfectly structured" play. And although Oedipus cannot escape his fate, he finally finds peace in the sequal, Oedipus at Colonus, after enduring the worst the fates had to offer.
Another masterpiece, Antigone, possibly the first of the surviving plays to have been written, is the story of a passionate young woman who refuses to submit to earthly authority when it forbids a proper burial for her brother Polyneices. Illustrating the rival claims of the state and the individual conscience, Antigone is an excellent example for the modern social dramatist.
In The Women of Trachis, Sophocles presents another well-rounded female character--Deianira, the wife of Heracles. Although the focus of the play is oddly split between Deianira and Heracles himself, this drama does offer a powerful and touching study of a jealous woman. His greatest character drama, however, is probably Electra. When Aeschylus treated this story, he was concerned primarily with the ethical issues of the blood feud. Sophocles dismisses the ethical question and adresses himself to the problem of character. What kind of woman was Electra that she would want so desperately to murder her own mother?

(http://www.imagi-nation.com/moonstruck/clsc1.htm)

The term protagonist can be applied to anybody, whether it is a person in this case Orestes, or an institution, however, the motive stays the same. In made up stories it is being described as a destructive force and the fight especially in greek tragedies and continuously the fight must go on until the hero thrashes the villain that is antigonist. The word protagonist is simply an antonymous term for the antagonist and the hero or the protagonist acts opposite of what antagonist acts. There is no definition that can easily define the destructive force or the constructive force, but as long as the story progresses the heroic and villainous traits of characters evolve and it gets devided into protagonist and antagonist. Sometimes it can happen that antagonist and protagonist, both qualities stay in the same character and is decided only by acts at some point of the play which he does and where he belongs.