Go, go: go you Bacchae go!

[tamaranth]

"A god in the family is no bad thing" says the ageing Cadmus, founder of Thebes, at the beginning of Colin Teevan's new translation of Euripides' Bacchae. By the end of the play, Cadmus has probably changed his mind and is cursing the day that his daughter was impregnated by Zeus, producing Dionysus. A god in the family makes the bodycount at the end of Hamlet look positively restrained.

Greg Hicks, playing Dionysus and Teiresias, previously shocked audiences as Orestes, and as Teiresias in Oedipus Rex. Here (Peter Hall's new production at the Olivier Theatre), he plays blind prophet Teiresias as an ageing rocker: long white hair, dark Lennon glasses, white suit and ivy wreath, with a white suit and the body language of an elderly, spirited Mick Jagger. Hicks plays Dionysus as a bull-headed deity, amused at the stupidity of mankind: and as an androgynous, charismatically sexual blond when he's disguised as his own priest. There is nothing at all soft or effeminate about this incarnation. Dionysus is all too often read as a laid-back, merry drunk of a god. Hall, Hicks and Teeven strip away the Latinate iconography (can you have iconography relating to a pagan pantheon?) to remind us that what lies beneath is an ancient god with ancient rites: bloody, bloody-minded, prehistoric and pre-patriarchal. Sex and sacrifice in the dark. Wine as sacrament. Murder as an act of worship. 'I'm part of you. I'm part of your mind,' says god to audience at the end: & whether or not we feel Dionysian - even after several daiquiris - it's there in our blood, or more accurately our ancestry.

William Houston is (as Pentheus) infuriatingly blase and well-groomed and atheist, the very model of a modern city ruler: and (as Pentheus' mother Agave) quietly strangled by the slow realisation - first of what has happened, and then of why it has happened. "I am done with weaving," she says before her eyes clear, and that is such a beautifully quiet expression of doom.

"And they, being plural feminine, are called Bacchae." Ah, the Bacchae. Ah, the translation: I heart Colin Teeven. I don't know the play well enough to quote other translations: but I can't imagine any version with a Bacchic chant the equal, for impact, of "Go! go you Bacchae go!" What I mean is ... Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, groups of people united by common purpose (sex and murder in the dark), acting as they would not act alone. It's why the unmasking at the end of the play, each Bacchid revealed as an individual, is unnerving. Before that, they act as one. You can seldom be sure who's speaking, though body language is a good indicator. (When Hicks - naked to the waist - speaks, the sweaty skin on his torso ripples in the primary-coloured light).

Greek drama works by concealment and allusion. It's all to do with masks, with layers: Hicks enters unmasked, dons the bull-horns of his divine form, then strips them off to reveal, not the actor's face, but the inhumanly blank mask-face of his 'priest of Dionysus' avatar. A double-layered mask ... All the masks are of individual faces, ordinary faces: very often ordinary English faces. It made the (consciously?) Shakespearian tone of the final scenes, with their sense of wrapping up the tragedy and carrying on with life, even more of a
contrast with the gilded, motionless, elevated divinity of Dionysus Risen.

And oh yes, those echoes of Biblical language: 'they know not what they do,' says priest-Dionysus of his stormtrooper-guards; he's described as moving in a mysterious way; and Pentheus and his aunts are 'of little faith'. There are certainly parallels: a lot of the baggage of Christianity reads like Just Another Asia-Minor Fertility God. Let's not forget the big difference, though: in Christianity unbelievers make their own way to Hell. They're not torn apart and strewn over the hillside for their relatives to collect.

Shuffling out of the theatre, the people behind me were wondering aloud what the 'moral' of the play was. "'Respect the gods', you morons," I muttered: perhaps too loudly, as the female of the pair said, "Oh yes, 'respect the gods'." One of these days I'll be rude too loudly and get my head kicked in (though possibly not by a National Theatre audience): but really.

Maybe I should just have quoted the Bacchae: "Do the gods their rites & they'll do right by you". (It sounded better live). This, admittedly, doesn't tell you what happens if you don't respect the gods. That's what the play's there for. But just a hint: if you do decide to disrespect the gods (especially any who may be part of your extended family), don't even contemplate disguising yourself as a woman and sneaking into a Bacchic rite. Just don't. It really isn't worth it.

Comments

[swisstone.livejournal.com]

So much better put than I could do it myself.

On "translation"

[swisstone.livejournal.com]

The NT program talks about "a new version by Colin Teevan". I suspect that means that Teevan hasn't worked directly from the Greek, but from other translations, his object being a performable text rather than a strictly accurate rendition; perhaps he got a Classicist to look over the text before the final version was made. This isn't uncommon; Don Taylor's versions of Sophocles' Oedipus plays, shown on television in the late 80s, were done in this fashion.

[ajshepherd.livejournal.com]

You know, it's at times like this I realise how fucking uneducated I am...

bloody Barnsley education...

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

what's being educated got to do with it?!

I read my first Greek tragedy, in translation, about 5 years ago after an intriguing mention in an Elizabeth Pewsey romance. Actually, I think I tried to read Electra before that, inspired by a 3-minute opera excerpt, but the translation was so inaccessible that I gave up.

Am not Filthy Pro like some people around here. Am merely curious.

[marypcb.livejournal.com]

I wonder if there's a DVD of Tony Harrison's Orestaia? Cracking poetry, good translation and exactly catching the spirit of the plays. They performed out in the stone amphiteatres in Delphi and down at the Minnack

Poor translations do Greek plays no favours; it's hard enough coping with the worldview where the god step in and out of your life casually, where gods compete and take it out on mortals, where submission is the only safe way (even being smart enough to gain the respect of gods can get you a ten year commute) and where being happy ever after isn't an option until you're safely honorouably dead (call no man happy till he is dead). But there are good translations around; look for a poet ratehr than an academic because that way you'll hear the power of the words even if they may not translate exactly.

Filthy pro speaks again

[swisstone.livejournal.com]

I wonder if there's a DVD of Tony Harrison's Orestaia?

Not commercially available within your or my price pocket. The NT production was recorded and broadcast on Channel 4, and you can buy the video in the US, but it will cost you $250 - this is because the package includes public performance rights, and these videos are aimed at universities wanting to use them in courses. I think there's a great untapped market out there for videos of ancient drama, very little of which is commercially available, though educational establishments can sometimes get hold of stuff. (And there are moves to release Michael Caccoyannis' films of Electra, Trojan Women and Iphigenaia at Aulis. All of these are worth seeing, and Trojan Women remains one of the best versions of the play I've seen.)

look for a poet rather than an academic

On the whole I agree, though it does tend to vary. I wouldn't recommend Ted Hughes' Alcestis for instance, which includes, without warning, a large chunk in the middle withich ia entirely Hughes and nothing to do with anything Euripides wrote (notable for the language being rather less inspired than when he is working from the Greek - and I know from experience that it really makes the play drag on stage). The old Penguins by Vellacott and Watling, which I suspect is what tamaranth would have used, are pretty dull. About half of each author has not been replaced by more modern versions, which are easier to recommend.

[ajshepherd.livejournal.com]

Well, it all sounds very interesting, but at the same time, large chunks of it are going whoooossh over my head, and I feel that if I was to go to something like this I just wouldn't understand it.
And that makes me feel horribly uneducated....

With all due respect ...

[swisstone.livejournal.com]

I feel that if I was to go to something like this I just wouldn't understand it

Bollocks. You don't give yourself enough credit. These are not intellectually challenging plays in the sense of being esoteric or obscure, though they are intended to make you think. Greek tragedy was mass-market entertainment, and if you can understand that the rational and irrational are in fundamental conflict with one another, you can understand what Bacchae is about. And quite a few others as well.

Re: With all due respect ...

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

Well they say similar things about Shakespeare, but the only way I've ever been able to follow what's going on is to study the text with a teacher who knows what they're talking about. Trying to watch one of the plays without studying it first (I think it was 12th Night) left me sitting there feeling incredibly stupid and doing an impression of a five year old at the cinema:

"Who's that? Was that the same person who just did that? Oh. Why is she saying that? What did that mean? Is she joking now? And that's the same person as before dressed up, right?"

In the end I shut up and let someone explain it to me in the interval and afterwards. So I know that "I'm thick, or uneducated, or both" feeling.

Re: With all due respect ...

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

Nah, Greek stuff is way easier, and the language is more straightforward too (depending on which translation, of course: but so far all the productions I've seen, as guided by the estimable swisstone, have been in crisp clear stark modern English. Go you Bacchae go.

It's occasionally tricky to work out who is speaking because of the masks, but any decent actor will give off enough signals to clarify this.

Plots are usually far less 'comic' (read 'convoluted') than Shakespeare, too: typical Greek tragedy seems to revolve around one person who, for whatever reason, upsets the gods in some way, and regrets it. So like the home life of our own dear queen...

[marypcb.livejournal.com]

I don't know the play well enough to quote other translations: but I can't imagine any version with a Bacchic chant the equal, for impact, of "Go! go you Bacchae go!"
That's probably the eu evoe chant... most of my classics texts are walled up behind lego but.. ahah. ok, there's a lot of repetition in the Greek (to the hills, to the hills, happy hails to the happy god, sacred songs on the sacred pipe) and the standard eu evoe chant (ah, hail kind of thing, more a moan than a real chant) gets turned into a verb. o ite backhai o ite backhai could be 'onwards' in the staid early 20thC translations that turn up most but literally it's 'o go you Bacchae! oh go you Bacchaea!"
Sounds like a hockey chant - I'd like to see the Bacchae as trad schoolgirls torn out of their nnocence by the power of the god, turning not to the lust of Pentheus' prurient imagination (schoolgirl lust! high school harlots!) but to the thrill of the chase...

A filthy pro speaks

[swisstone.livejournal.com]

marypcb is pretty close; it's ite bakchai, ite bakchai, literally "Go Bacchae! Go Bacchae!" Almost cheerleading in its form.

Re: A filthy pro speaks

[ajshepherd.livejournal.com]

Which reminds me of the Egyptian Cheerleader chant.

"Sun God! Sun God! Ra! Ra! Ra!"

I'll get me coat...

Re: A filthy pro speaks

[damienw]

I'm with you:
All praise the Sun God
He is a fun god
Ra Ra Ra!

[latexiron.livejournal.com]

Knock Knock!
Who's there?
Euripedes!
Euripedes who?
Euripedes trousers, Eumenedies trousers!

I'll get me coat...

Masks

[swisstone.livejournal.com]

Something that I noticed at the time, and has just re-occurred to me.

The Chorus of Bacchae were dressed in a variety of animal skins, not all of which were what Victorian schoolmasters would call "decent". A couple of the women in the chorus had bared breasts. They were completely unselfconscious of this through the performance, when masked, but at the "curtain call", when the masks came off, they held their arms to conceal their nudity. Interesting, that.