Performance-based research into Greek drama

The ancient 'evidence' for the staging of Greek tragedy is very slight, and much of it reflects Hellensitic and Roman performance practices, when dramas were performed in a theatre shape different from that of the theatre of Dionysos. So the first main aim of this paper is to argue that for many issues which Greek drama raises, the ancient evidence is so inconclusive in itself that, if a scholar interprets it in isolation in his or her study, he or she naturally supplements the evidence with subjective assumptions about the nature of the theatrical performance. These assumptions may well turn out to be inappropriate, if they are based on modern images of theatre, and not derived from performance experience of producing ancient Greek tragedy in accordance with what is known about Athenian performance practice. By contrast, a research production which does conform in relevant respects with Athenian conventions may provide insights which are more reliable - perhaps even more 'objective' - than deductions made, without benefit of modern performance, from ancient evidence

The resolution of Joe Orton's What the Butler Saw

Joe Orton declared in 1965 that ‘farce is higher than comedy in that it is very close to tragedy’. It was his aim to reanimate the genre of farce and forge it into an instrument of social critique, and this paper shows how he did that. As the title suggests, What the Butler Saw (1969) is a peepshow, in which the audience are voyeurs seeing into an anarchic universe, which exposes the greed, sexuality and violence lying under the surface of middle-class British life. In Bergson's terms, this play is a ‘snowball farce’. At the climax of the anarchy, metal grilles fall into place – not to isolate the patients in the wards of the mental hospital where the play is set, but over the doors of Dr. Prentice's office, trapping all but one of the supposedly sane characters. The action of the play is then resolved in a short but extraordinary final scene. It comprises (1) a recognition between long-lost relatives, which parodies this familiar comic ending by adding an Oedipal twist; (2) a deus ex machina; (3) an Aristophanic revelation; (4) the closing departure. Each of these four phases is analysed briefly, and in the light of this analysis a challenge will be mounted to Leslie Smith's view that ‘the ending reasserts the “real” world we all live in after the fantasy-reality of Dr Prentice's office’. This reading, while prima facie attractive, fails to do justice to the full meaning of the play

The stagecraft of Aristophanes. Comic business: theatricality, dramatic technique, and performance contexts of Aristophanic comedy (book review)

Review of: Revermann (M.) Comic Business. Theatricality, Dramatic Technique, and Performance Contexts of Aristophanic Comedy. Pp. xiv + 396, pls. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Cased, £65. ISBN: 978-0-19-815271-2

Aristophanes' Lysistrata

Production of the Greek play Lysistrata by Aristophanes. Directed and translated by Michael Ewans

Aristophanes: acharnians, knights, and peace.

Most readers nowadays encounter the plays of Aristophanes in the classroom, not the theater. Yet the "father of comedy" wrote his plays for the stage, not as literary texts. Many English translations of the plays were written decades ago, and in their outdated language they fail to capture the dramatic liveliness of the original comedies. Here Michael Ewans offers new and lively translations of three of Aristophanes' earliest surviving plays: " Acharnians, Knights, "and" Peace.

Brecht at the opera (book review)

Review of: Joy H. Calico. Brecht at the Opera. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2008

Dominance and submission, rhetoric and sincerity: insights from a production of Sophocles' 'Electra'

There is a mainstream consensus about Sophocles' Electra. Most interpreters believe that Sophocles expected his audience to approve of the "heroic constancy" of Electra, and to be gratified by the triumph of Orestes and Electra. Jebb wrote of "a deed of unalloyed merit, which brings the troubles of the house to an end," while more recent commentators have elaborated on this reading. Bowra wrote that " ... a new light shines for men. Justice and order are restored, and even in the welter of vengeance and hatred rises a new force of love." This reading is not simply a product of the pro-liberationist stance that was often adopted in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; Gardiner and March have aggressively revived it in recent years. The reading seems to me to be quite impossible, however, in the light of what actually happens in the tragedy, especially in the finale; it also interprets Electra without any reference to its cultural context. Sheppard (1918, 1927) and Kells pioneered an a lternative interpretation, which I outline in what follows

Opera from the Greek: studies in the poetics of appropriation

Michael Ewans explores how classical Greek tragedy and epic poetry have been appropriated in opera, through eight selected case studies. These range from Monteverdi's Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria, drawn from Homer's Odyssey, to Mark-Antony Turnage's Greek, based on Sophocles's Oedipus the King. Choices have been based on an understanding that the relationship between each of the operas and their Greek source texts raise significant issues, involving an examination of the process by which the librettist creates a new text for the opera, and the crucial insights into the nature of the drama that are bestowed by the composer's musical setting. Ewans examines the issues through a comparative analysis of significant divergences of plot, character and dramatic strategy between source text, libretto and opera