The setting: Aulis, where the Greek army waits to set sail for Troy, frustrated by an adverse wind. The cast: familiar enough - Agamemnon is there, and Menelaus, and Achilles and Odysseus and the rest of them. But this is a wonderfully skewed version of that known scenario. Menelaus is not above a spot of rape - 'Well, lads, you know how it is? We've all been there, haven't we?' - and is given to loose talk about 'that swine of an Asian' who abducted his lovely Helen ('the only woman currently alive today who can claim to have been born from a swan's egg'). Ajax is a dim thug who has inadvertently had the latrines built to the windward of the camp, Achilles is a vain hunk with the eyes of a killer, Nestor is a superannuated cattle raider who rattles on about past glories. Oh, and there is a blind Singer, who entertains the troops and supplies a palatable version of current events.

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