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

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.