There’s this happy family man

Agamemnon, with his lovely wife,

Clytemnestra, and the three kids

Iphigenia, Electra and the boy

Orestes.
Only Agamemnon’s brother’s wife,

who turns out to be Clytemnestra’s sister

Helen, runs off with some blow-in from

Asia Minor with a reputation for bad

judgement and

an association with plaster.
And Agamemnon goes after Helen with his

brother, Menelaus, across the sea heading

for Troy but they get holed up on some

middle of nowhere island, waiting for a good

wind. And Agamemnon, who just happens

to have Iphigenia with him

chasing after Auntie Helen in a

fleet of battle ships with

ten years’worth of sea biscuit and arrowheads,

Agamemnon sacrifices Iphigenia?

for a head wind?
Let me get this straight.

And there’s a goddess in there somewhere So

Agamemnon and Menelaus get Helen back

and burn down Troy and

kill all the men who aren’t already dead and

sell all the women and children into slavery

except the boy children of all the really

famous dead men—they make sure they go

the way of their famous dead dads—and

Cassandra, who’s the daughter of one

famous dead man and the sister of another

famous dead man and the auntie of another one

and who has a strange gift for prophecy,

absolutely correct in every detail but

no one ever believes her

Whom Agamemnon decides is a lovely girl,

too good to waste on the open market and

a dab hand in the kitchen

all that experience with entrails

and he can’t resist one more souvenir

to remind him of his time abroad

Greetings from Ilium.
Let me get this straight.

So Clytemnestra, who’s taken up with a boy

with a completely forgettable name and

no chin whatsoever,

welcomes Agamemnon back from the war.

He’s killed her eldest daughter, stayed away

ten years doing a favour for his brother never

a postcard, no maintenance,

he’s got a shipful of women in chains

including Cassandra who’s frothing at the

mouth with prophecy and her frock falling

off her she’s in such a state but none of the

men listening, getting a good eyeful.
Let me get this straight.

Clytemnestra says hello darling

home from the war are we

fancy a bath?

And Agamemnon says “Hello love

I’ll just have a bit of a wash

and eat whatever you’ve got on the spit

and who’s this boy with no chin?”
So Clytemnestra kills Agamemnon in the

bath and knocks off Cassandra just for good

measure it’s a shame about the frock.
Just let me get this straight.

Electra, who’s always been the awkward one,

the middle child often is,

talks baby Orestes into killing his

mum and the boy with no chin

I’ve remembered his name

Aegisthus,

Because Clytemnestra’s been a bad wife and

shouldn’t have taken a lover or killed

Agamemnon I wouldn’t have thought

Electra was that close to her father really

but you never can tell.

And Orestes does and Electra goes mad and

runs amok through the garden and

comes to a bad end and

Then the Furies come into the picture

where have they been all this time

not a sizzle or hiss out of them before but

there you go; they’re on the case now,

tearing after Orestes, he

never gets a moment’s peace after this and all

because he’s killed his mother.
And let me get this straight:

Agamemnon and Orestes are the heroes.