For tears are music too and keep a song unheard in hearts that weep.

But the dead has lost his pain and weeps no more.

Death cannot be what life is, child. The cup of death is empty, and life has always hope.

There lives not in my life any more the hope that others have. Nor will I tell the lie to mine own heart, that all is well or shall be well...

The dust as smoke rises, it spreads wide its wing. It makes me as a shadow, and my city a vanished thing.

Out on the smoke she goes, and her name no man knows.

don taylor has done exactly what I like in versions of greek plays; kept the original structure and tradition but played with the rhythm and language to make it more accessible for contemporary audiences. however, I think he could have striped it back a bit more.

That shows us a concatenation of several tragedies that happen simultaneously to several women due to war. And not to a specific cause of direct divine origin, this work of Euripides acquires a heartrending force and a tremendous realistic vigor that makes it closer to the current reader than other works of Greek tragedies.
Before the fall of Troy, the god Poseidon, a sympathizer of the Trojans, speaks with the Greek goddess Athena. She is offended because Ajax has raped the priestess, Cassandra, dragging her from her temples without any Greek criticizing him. Between both, they decide each one of them collides and will receive punishment on his return home.
Meanwhile, several notable Trojans wait for the Greek victors to decide their destinies in the captivity that awaits them, and a Greek messenger will inform them of what they will be. First, Hecuba, the widow of King Priam, regrets that at his age, he will have to perform tasks and be at the service of Ulysses. Later, when Menelao considers the punishment he must give to the traitor Helena and talks about killing her when he arrives in Greece, she defends herself, saying that she is not to blame for what happened and that order goddess Aphrodite kidnapped her. But Hecuba reveals that what happened was that he took a fancy to his son Paris and never resisted leaving Greece. Furthermore, he asks that Menelao punish her as he deserves and, above all, does not allow her to travel to Greece in the same boat, fearing that he will seduce her again and be free from punishment.
Kassandra knows that Agamemnon will own it and shows us his diviner capacity to presage the catastrophes that will happen to the Greeks. Polyxena, another of Hecuba's daughters, is destined to be sacrificed before the tomb of Achilles. Andromache, the widow of Hector, is intended as the son of Achilles. However, before his son is ripped out and thrown from a tower, as decided by Ulysses, he thinks it is too dangerous to leave the son of such a prominent Trojan hero.

3.5 stars. I really liked this play. The focus on the women left behind after their husbands were slaughtered and how they each coped with impending slavery or death was done well. Its quite alarming how a play written 2.5 thousand years ago can still be relevant today (in regards to the injustices women suffered and the cons of war).