Cheshire has set Women of Trachis deep in the territory of American myth - the Wild West. With its harsh landscapes and larger-than-life heroes, it is a world both familiar and distant, a world that still resonates within the American psyche. Imagine Sophocles as an American storyteller using the stylized cowboy lingo of that realm to convey elemental feelings of love and loss. For all of us who love a good yarn, the grandeur and the grit of the Wild West are sure to strike close to the bone. Says Kenneth J. Reckford, "I was first shocked, then moved and delighted by Keyne Cheshire's translation of Sophocles' Trachinian Women into an American vernacular and Wild West setting. Its clear, simple, yet poetic and rhythmical speeches propel the reader forward and deeper into Sophocles' tragedy, while the choral odes give voice to lastingly powerful feelings of hope and fear, spiritual exultation and earth-bound sadness and pain. A beautiful and very disturbing play, whether in Athens or America, it is well re-created here as a modern-day script just begging to be performed."
