-Title: Phaedra’s love

-Subtitle: Drama in eight scenes

-Editorial: Methuen Student Editions

-Year of publication: 1996

-Place of publication: London

Hippolytus: A fat man who lives since years closed in his room and subsist with fast food and chips and with sex received from many other people who seems to like him.

Phaedra: The stepmother of Hippolytus who is in love with him. She’s a woman who has made many mistakes on her life and now she carries with the guilt of it.

Strophe: The natural daughter of Phaedra. She was raped by Hippolytus and have sex with Theseus, husband of her mother. She’s a girl who has clear ideas but doesn’t know the consequences of them.

Theseus: The husband of Phaedra and natural father of Hippolytus. He has disappeared years ago for work, and don’t give any notice of him to his family. It’s a vengative man who has a strange past and sexual relations with Strophe.

Doctor: Is called by Phaedra to see the status of Hippolytus but he doesn’t have anything clear from he.

Priest: A man with more doubts than Hippolytus who interview him in the prison cell.

Hippolytus is a man who lives since years in his room, masturbating himself and having sex continuously. Phaedra, his stepmother is in love with him and Strophe, her daughter, says to her that think on Theseus or to have sex with other people rather than Hippolytus, because he raped her on the past. Although this, she doesn’t make any case and after a talk, she makes to him oral sex. Later, he rapes her and kills her. Hippolytus now is acusated for violation and condemned to death. A priest comes to confess him and he ends performing oral sex to him.

Theseus and Strophe swear revenge for the death of Phaedra and the day of the sentence, and for trying to protect him, Theseus rapes her and kills her. After he makes clear the situation, he kills himself and finally, after Hippolytus dies, a vulture eats his body.

There is not a place clear for the plot because the author don’t tell in any moment a specific ubication but we can situate in modern times because they watch television although this field neither is clear.

The author uses short statements who is a sign of null communication but sometimes, the characters uses large for explain the circumstances to take them to their situations.

This work is full of sexual connotations between the characters, even if it’s with women, like the rapes of Phaedra or Strophe and all the other girls, or with men, like the priest in their cell. Apart from this, the language who uses is clear and direct, with no euphemism.

My personal opinion is that it’s a good work, easy to read, and comprehensible. The characters are complex and their situation too. The dark ambience gives to them a charisma unusual on these characters.