HUBRIS Review: Greek Tragedy Speaks to the Modern World

It is the deep, unsettling beat of a drum.

It echoes through the theatre long before anyone speaks, setting a rhythm that feels less like music than a heartbeat before battle. A vast military tent dominates the stage. There are no marble columns, no attempt to recreate Ancient Greece, no visual clichés borrowed from mythology.

Within seconds, it becomes clear that HUBRIS has no interest in illustrating the past.

Instead, it asks a far more uncomfortable question.

What if the oldest tragedy ever written never really ended?

Presented at La Factory – Espaces Roseau Teinturiers during the Festival Off Avignon, Clara Jauvart-Lacoste’s production draws its inspiration from The Iliad. Yet calling it an adaptation would miss the point.

Homer’s epic provides the language.

The play speaks about us.

The camp on stage could belong to the warriors gathered outside Troy.

It could just as easily belong to soldiers waiting in any conflict zone today. Nothing in the scenography forces the audience toward one place or one century. That ambiguity is deliberate, allowing every spectator to recognize fragments of a world they already know.

War, after all, rarely begins with weapons.

It begins when someone becomes convinced that only one voice deserves to be heard.

That idea lies at the heart of hubris, the Greek concept describing the fatal excess of pride that blinds human judgement. In Greek tragedy, hubris is never presented as simple arrogance. It is the moment when an individual becomes so certain of his own righteousness that every limit—moral, human or divine—appears meaningless.

From that moment on, disaster is no longer an accident.

It becomes a consequence.

This production never explains the concept as if it belonged in a classroom. It lets the audience watch it unfold.

Achilles is introduced not as an untouchable legend but as a man carrying the unbearable weight of his own reputation. Honour has become inseparable from identity. Every decision feels irreversible because pride leaves no room for retreat.

The danger does not come from his strength.

It comes from his inability to step back.

That distinction changes everything.

Throughout the performance, Clara Jauvart-Lacoste avoids easy heroism. The figures inherited from mythology are stripped of the distance that centuries have placed between them and us. Their fears, ambitions and contradictions feel remarkably familiar.

The audience is not invited to admire them.

It is invited to recognise them.

That is where HUBRIS finds its real power.

Not in retelling one of the founding stories of Western literature, but in revealing how little the mechanisms of power have changed since Homer first described them.

The names may belong to mythology.

The choices belong to every generation.

There Are No Winners in Hubris

Some productions impress because of their technical ambition.

Others because of their performances.

HUBRIS leaves its mark for a different reason. It never allows the audience to settle into the comfort of choosing heroes and villains.

Everyone on stage believes they are right.

That is precisely what makes the story so unsettling.

Achilles fights for honour. Agamemnon defends his authority. Every decision is justified before it is made. Every character finds a reason to move one step further, even when that step leads towards catastrophe.

Watching the play, it becomes impossible not to notice how familiar that mechanism feels.

History rarely begins with monsters.

More often, it begins with people convinced they cannot be wrong.

Clara Jauvart-Lacoste understands this perfectly. She never pushes the actors towards excess. The tension comes from restraint rather than spectacle. A pause lasts just a little longer than expected. A look says more than a speech. Silence sometimes carries greater weight than anger.

That economy of movement keeps the audience alert.

Nothing feels decorative.

Every gesture has a purpose.

The giant drum standing at the centre of the stage is one of the strongest visual ideas in the production. As red paint gradually spreads across its surface, it becomes impossible not to think of blood. Yet the image never feels gratuitous. It grows naturally with the story, reminding the audience that violence always leaves a mark long after the battle is over.

The military tent works in much the same way.

It is neither ancient nor modern.

It simply exists, refusing to belong to a specific place or time. That choice gives the production an unexpected universality. Troy could be anywhere. Yesterday. Today. Tomorrow.

One of the production’s greatest strengths is the space it gives to its female characters.

They are not there simply to witness history.

They carry its consequences.

While warriors speak about glory, women speak about loss. While leaders argue over honour, they are left to live with absence, grief and survival.

One line captures that painful contrast with remarkable clarity:

« Whether divine or mortal, no woman ever walks away unscathed from the brutality of men. »

The sentence lands in complete silence.

No dramatic effect follows.

None is needed.

The cast approaches these characters with honesty rather than theatrical grandeur. Adrien Bensmaine, Cécile Garnier, Corentin Gerold, Mathéo Krzyzyk-Brand and Léa Michelot never perform mythology as something distant. They make these figures recognisably human—capable of courage, tenderness, fear and devastating mistakes.

By the middle of the performance, the audience is no longer watching the fall of Troy.

It is watching something far more intimate.

The slow moment when pride becomes more important than compassion.

And once that line has been crossed, there is no victory left to celebrate.

Only consequences.

When the Curtain Falls, the Question Remains

The applause comes without hesitation.

Not because HUBRIS offers easy emotions or spectacular effects, but because it demands something increasingly rare from its audience: attention.

For nearly ninety minutes, Clara Jauvart-Lacoste resists every temptation to simplify Homer’s world. She trusts the audience to make the connections for themselves.

That confidence pays off.

People leave the theatre talking quietly. Some discuss the performances. Others return to the symbolism of the drum, the tent or the red paint. More than one conversation begins with the same observation:

« It doesn’t really feel like Ancient Greece. »

That may be the production’s greatest achievement.

Without changing Homer’s story, it quietly shifts the audience’s perspective.

The Trojan War is no longer a distant chapter from classical literature.

It becomes a reminder that human beings have always struggled with the same temptation: believing that strength alone can solve what wisdom refuses to confront.

Clara Jauvart-Lacoste never turns HUBRIS into a political statement.

She does something far more difficult.

She allows the audience to draw its own parallels.

That choice gives the production an honesty often missing from contemporary theatre. Nothing feels forced. Nothing is there to provoke for the sake of provocation.

The story is allowed to breathe.

So are its characters.

The performances deserve particular recognition.

Adrien Bensmaine, Cécile Garnier, Corentin Gerold, Mathéo Krzyzyk-Brand and Léa Michelot work as an ensemble rather than competing for attention. Their chemistry creates the impression of a community slowly pulled apart by decisions that can no longer be undone.

That collective approach serves the production well.

Greek tragedy has never been about one individual.

It has always been about the consequences one individual’s choices impose on everyone else.

Seen from that perspective, HUBRIS speaks as much about responsibility as it does about pride.

Every action sends ripples through the lives of others.

Every refusal to listen carries a cost.

Every victory achieved through blind ambition leaves someone behind to count the losses.

Perhaps that is why Homer’s epic still feels alive after almost three thousand years.

The armour has changed.

The battlefields have changed.

Human nature has not.

Presented at La Factory – Espaces Roseau Teinturiers as part of the Festival Off Avignon 2026, HUBRIS stands out not because it modernises Greek tragedy, but because it understands there is no need to modernise it.

The questions Homer asked remain our questions.

The fears he explored remain our fears.

And the danger at the centre of his story remains painfully familiar.

Long after the lights fade, one impression lingers.

The greatest tragedies are rarely born from a lack of strength.

They begin when human beings become so certain of themselves that they stop recognising every limit that makes them human.

That is why HUBRIS is far more than a theatrical production.

It is a reminder that the oldest warning ever written still deserves to be heard.