There are only a few in the gratuitous hand-on-chin pose and only a few smoking cigarettes.
Even though the seductive Circe's greeting is "Welcome to my home; don't mind the swine," and the almighty blase Zeus observes the proceedings from a stage seat on high, martini in hand, gratuitous anachronisms do not drive the show.
Such a macabre level of detail might seem gratuitous in less erudite hands, but Doughty brings a lightness of touch to the text: on rearranging the bodies to access the first in line for cremation, she observes: "That meant stacking and restacking the cardboard boxes like a game of body-fridge Tetris".
He has more subtle moments too - the gentle eyeroll when an indignant Jason demands: "Do I look stupid?" But I still come back to Tara Thornton, played by Rutina Wesley, who steals every scene she's in, whether she's handing out gratuitous insults or lessons in race politics.
In a way, even worse than the loss of his rights is the sheer gratuitous ugliness of his treatment at the hands of American soldiers: "Every day all prisoners were lined up outside and made to stand in the sun.
This freedom of the hand, however, does not lead to gratuitous sketchiness.
On the white plate sat a pâté of the liver, with three sprigs of chives sticking out from its centre (which Eduardo, either offended or embarrassed by the gratuitous garnish, removed with a quick sweep of his hand).
There were days that simply vanished, hundreds of hours lost to solitary hands of bridge, idle fiddling with power tools, gratuitous afternoon naps.
Crisp, cruel, gratuitous: Kelly's spite came off like a sudden surrender of the upper hand she had hoped to flaunt in the face-off.
Putting Nancarrow in human hands, with or without his consent, may have been one big mistake; the gratuitous gift of instrumental color to his music was probably another.
