A dank and grey space; a desolate, Escherian stairwell; an eerie window through which filter shards of light like poison darts – these are the first things you see as the curtain draws open for Perth’s new staging of Richard Strauss’s Elektra, a co-production between West Australian Opera, ThinIce, Perth International Arts Festival and Opera Australia. The scene is aptly set for a 100-minute tour de force, a vertiginous descent into the darkest depths of the human psyche.

Strauss’s masterwork – his first collaboration with Austrian writer Hugo von Hofmannsthal – is not exactly what you might call a light-hearted romp. Based on the Ancient Greek tragedy of the same name by Sophocles, Elektra is a grim chronicle of a woman’s obsessive hatred and desire for revenge.

Elektra (Eva Johansson) is gripped day and night by a single, all-consuming desire: to avenge the death of her father, Agamemnon, who was murdered by her mother Klytämnestra (Elizabeth Campbell) and Klytämnestra’s lover Aegisth (Richard Greager). Elektra’s sister Chrysothemis (Orla Boylan) pleads with her to abandon her unhealthy obsession for revenge, Elektra is adamant that the time for action has come. With the help of her exiled brother Orest...