The high art of ancient Athens blazed into life on a gritty side street in Northern Liberties during the 2005 Fringe Festival. Electra, the tragedy by Euripides, was presented by DVPN's Pagan Arts Initiative and B. Someday Productions, an inventive troupe based in Fishtown.

Greek theater was an outdoor urban event. Director Stan Heleva transported its spirit to a roped-off street in the artists' district. An electric guitar on a loading dock updated Apollo's lyre. Free Budweiser substituted for retsina. The demigods Castor and Polydeuces pulled up on a spiffy yellow scooter while Queen Clytemnestra arrived in an elderly Citroen 2 Chevaux chariot. Deus ex machina indeed!

But the thunder and music of Euripides was pure paleo in Heleva's respectful adaptation. This drama is propelled by a river of language, handled beautifully by B. Someday's cast.

Euripides' Electra has posed problems for modern critics, who lean toward Sophocles' version of the tale. Perhaps it takes a pagan to appreciate what Euripides was up to! The play shows how people harken to the guidance and the mission of the gods in difficult situations, how gods and men work together toward imperfect solutions that marry pure passion with correct understanding.

In this particular tough situation, Electra is reunited with her long lost brother Orestes, with whom she plots to murder her mother Clytemnestra, who had pitched them both away after she murdered their dad Agamemnon and planted her boyfriend in the palace. To be fair, Clytemnestra had issues with her ex-husband, who had sacrificed Electra's sister on an altar to gain an edge in warfare. A more dysfunctional family than our own, we hope, but also one that grapples with deeply conflicting emotional loyalties and moral duties. It challenges moderns no less than it does the ancients.

I found it particularly moving when the conspirators dedicated their mission with an oath to Zeus. It was no longer theater at that point but ritual, and it worked for me as it must have for the Athenians.

Heleva also played Orestes, as a clueless jock who rises to the challenge of heroism and pays the ultimate price. His partner Michelle Pauls was electric as Electra, a woman who must show both nobility and shame, in whom tenderness and ruthlessness both run deep.

The chorus is to Greek drama what the commercial is to TV drama: an essential interlude. Amanda LaPergola and Christa D'Agostino staged their choruses as sultry, slinky mixed-media performances choreographed by Michelle Pauls, dancing as they chanted the poetry while Patrick Mansfield twanged acid guitar chords. Video-worthy. Nancy Edwards gave a sharp, proud reading of Clytemnestra as a middle-aged woman beyond apologizing for her life. Peter Miltz, who played Orestes' sidekick Pylades, was born for verse drama. Michael Pastorok smoothly carried off the comic underclass roles of peasant and tutor.

In sponsoring productions like this, DVPN's Pagan Arts Initiative is reclaiming the important pagan heritage of our civilization and asserting its voice in the contemporary world.

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