THE LIST gave the Edinburgh Festival Fringe production of reworkingCassandra four stars:

"In an epic full of raw deals, the Iliad's Cassandra, daughter of Priam of Troy, had one of the rawest. Able to see the future, but not convince others of the truth of her vision, she was forced to endure suffering many times over. In New York theatre company Browne Barnes' reworkingCassandra, she is taken through it all again, being not so much reworked as reborn, twisted and slung violently into the 21st century.

"This powerful play opens with her crucified against threatre lights, recounting her history while being heckled by an actor from the audience. She has survived war and married a man who turns out to have killed members of her close family in the conflict. The twist is classical, but the reworkingCassandra's theatrical strategies are decidedly modern. The two-man cast flit from genre to genre and scene to scene with a speed that confuses as it transfixes. Scenes of domestic angst are mixed liberally with surreal episodes, recollections of war and a brilliant country-and-western duet. The acting is impressive, the simple set effective and the play as a whole packs a vicious, unpredictable punch."

SYNOPSIS . . . Dramatizing the venerable tale of the woman who prophesies that doom is coming to destroy the world, reworkingCassandra harkens back to theater's ritual roots. It also draws from the seminal developments in the theater of this century. Approximately one hour in length, reworkingCassandra has two characters: Cassandra and Audience Member. It merges the burlesque of the absurdists and the American avant-garde with the mythic Greek theater of Aeschylus's Cassandra. It is a piece about war, specifically about what happens to us the war is done with us. A complex and layered theatrical work that shows how we survive in a fragmented and splintered world, it is saturated with equal parts ritual and mystery, and at its center is operatic text, sound and movement.

Earlier versions of reworkingCassandra include Cassandra Monologues and The Cassandra Project, a four-character piece.

PRODUCTION HISTORY . . . August 2001, Gateway Theatre, Edinburgh Festival Fringe. January 2001, showcase during the annual APAP conference in New York City. July 1997, The Cassandra Project, Ontological Theater, New York City.