The play opens with Cassandra trying to stop Alexander from taking his fateful trip by warning him that “everyt hing will be destroyed”. He addresses the
audience and explains to them that they already know the story but that he alone knows the inside story. He snaps pictures of all the family members as they arrive: Helen, Alexander, Cassandra, Priam, Hector, Hecuba. Orhan then focusses his attention on Helen. Helen—whose incomparable beauty cannot bring her the man she truly loves, her lover’s older brother and faithful husband, Hector, ―sits at her loom weaving into stunning tapestries her own drama as well as the great drama unfolding around her. She is filled with remorse at having abandoned her little daughter for Alexander, the man who seduced her away from her family and brought her from a city in Greece to a city in
ancient Turkey where the women blame her for the warships encircling their shores. Both Helen and Cassandra know she is only the pretext―because men “cannot live without their wars”. On discovering that Alexander leaves his men on the battlefield to come to her, she feels contempt for him and goes unwillingly to their trysts. When Hector and Helen find themselves alone together, they gaze lingeringly into each other’s eyes for the brief moment they are together. Helen begs Hector to rest before resuming battle but he will not keep his men waiting and he leaves. Oh Hector, Hector, Hector grieves Helen certain he will not return from battle. At the end of the play she realizes she will not be able to finish the work on her loom because the world around her is dying and “Now there is not time!” --- She remembers Cassandra’s words: “so much has been trampled for the sake of man’s glory.”
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Next the play is focused on Cassandra who believes the gods have called her to serve them in a special way and fears a man at her side will distract her from her mission. Hecuba pressures her daughter to choose a husband and they become more and more estranged.― Priam admires his daughter as much as he is perplexed by her. When she
comes to plead for the way of peace instead of the warrior’s way: “Father you alone can change the way men understand their manhood,” the great warrior/king cannot imagine life without war and bows his head: “Cassie, I’m so sorry, we know no other way.” Cassandra tries in vain to awaken people to the fact that their greedy lifestyle will be their downfall and that: “Everyt hing will be destroyed and very soon.” She turns down the man she loves in order to be faithful to her mission but is nonetheless devastated when he proposes to her younger sister. That night she slips past the guards and runs down the path toward the temple which is locked; she screams up at the night sky. “If you don’t like the way we do things down here, come down and fix them yourselves--you’re the ones with the power.” She accuses
the gods of injustice toward herself and toward all of humanity: “The most brutal you cause to prevail, not the best and bravest of men.” Working herself and the dogs (whom the guards have sent out to protect her) into a frenzy, she attempts to throw a stone at the
sky before losing consciousness.
