Kill and counter-kill: why does the Oresteia still slay them?
This year, three theatres will rework Aeschylus's tragic trilogy about a family's gory reckoning and the difficult birth of democracy in ancient Greece. Charlotte Higgins wonders why it continues to strike a nerve todayThis week, the actor Lia Williams visited a butcher's shop. There, she learned how to stab a knife through live flesh and ribs: to feel in her arm and hand what it is to cut through a body, throug…