Forsyth, N.

Serveur académique lausannois

Global Postsbuilding CUNY Communities since 2009http://tags.commons.gc.cuny.eduBakkhai at the Almeida TheatreThe Almeida Theatre in London's Islington has been running a season of Greek plays beginning with arather mix-and-match Oresteia that later transferred to the West End. This was followed by Euripides's Bakkhai, spelled thus by translator Anne Carson to signal its Greek rather than its more familiar Latinizedform, and so to underline the strangeness of the play. There was a splendid all-female Chorus(characteristic of Euripides though played by boys, ephebes, in his time), in which singing (or chanting)and dancing alternated with their share of the rhythmical dialogue; and the play was performed with justthe three male actors then permitted (an addition by Sophocles to the two who performed in Aeschylus).Yet no setting could be more different from the open-air theatre of Dionysus in Athens: this small,intimate space has untreated brick walls, and the relationship between audience and action is intense.There were no masks to sever the link with the actors: we knew the performers could see us. Dionysoseven invited us to dance with him (no one did) and at one point the Bakkhai sat on the edge of the stageas if they would jump down into the audience. Disguise, role-playing, ecstatic dancing, demonstrated invarious ways that identity, above all perhaps gender identity, is not fixed, but can be transformed orchallenged. Almost everything about the production contributed to that message, which became bothmore liberating and more threatening as the play went on. Dionysus (Bakkhos) was the god of theatre,and so also of personal transformation. The elderly Kadmos and Tieresias dress as women to join thefestivities, and eventually Pentheus is induced to do so too in the famous "toilet" scene: "how do I look?"These are necessary ingredients of the play, yet in this production were made constantly anddisconcertingly to cross the edge between humor and horror. The resulting anxiety, both generic andsexual, was perhaps the most obvious way in which the audience was made to feel the power ofDionysus, so close we could almost touch it."Here am I," said Ben Whishaw, making his entrance as Dionysus in jeans, long white tee-shirt withflowing dark hair to below the waist and a high erotic charge, smiling toward the audience but even nowinsinuating the barely concealed threat that is to be horrifyingly realized as the tragedy progresses. He hascome, he explained, to impose his new religion and "to thrill you. Thebes. Don't doubt I will. Here's whatyou need: a fawnskin, a thyrsus, absolute submission." Thebes is the first Greek city he has visited,having already “set all Asia dancing,” but it appears that, even though his mother Semele was local, thenew king Pentheus, son of Semele’s sister Agave, does not acknowledge this new god. “But I am a god.I’ll show him. Him and all his Thebans.” Petulant? Yes, and dangerous. Canadian poet and classicistAnna Carson’s translation, as these quotations show, is racy but not offensively so, and its diction is clearand well adapted for performance.                                        1 / 6Global Postsbuilding CUNY Communities since 2009http://tags.commons.gc.cuny.eduBakkhai at the Almeida Theatre, London. Photo credit: Marc Brenner.Whishaw was the star of the show, depicted on the poster in a pensive but threatening mood: he returnedin various shapes including finally that of the triumphant bull-god. In keeping with the theme oftransforming identities, he also played both Teiresias, ancient prophet of all the Theban tragedies, whospeaks up for this new god, as well as the messenger who must tell the terrible story of the drug-crazedmadness of the maenads out on Mt. Kithaeron. Kevin Harvey played the aged Kadmos, already in the gripof the Bakkhic frenzy, and doubled as a guard and an appalled servant. Yet the most extraordinary actingand most shocking gender reversal was that of Bertie Carvel. He entered as King Pentheus in an elegantbusiness suit, contrasting in a key early scene with the robed and long-haired Dionysus. Then in theemotionally overwhelming coup of the play Carvel returned as his own mother Agave, bringing in thehead of her son on a long staff (the thyrsus of the Bakkhic ritual)—a head which, for a long time shecontinued to insist was that of a lion she had courageously slaughtered in the ritual sparagmos (when awild animal is torn apart and fed to the participants). “But the trophy in her hands is her own tears.”Limiting the principals to three actors required such changes of roles, but in this production, shiftingbetween male and female brilliantly exploited a vein of homoeroticism between Dionysos and Pentheus,as the playful and effeminate god activated the suppressed fantasies of the straight and uptight ruler andeventually persuaded him to don women's clothing so that he could spy on the doings of the mob offemale followers out on the mountainside. Whishaw's Dionysos constantly luxuriated in his eroticcharisma; his elegant body movements had powerful androgynous appeal, too much for poor Pentheus.The Chorus is always one of the main challenges for a director of Greek tragedy, but in this play their role                                        2 / 6Global Postsbuilding CUNY Communities since 2009http://tags.commons.gc.cuny.eduis intricately involved in the action. In the closed and darkened space of the Almeida, their presence waselectrifying. Ten ethnically diverse followers of Dionysus, they entered separately and rummaged aroundin their bags to bring out old clothes to put on with their roles. Gradually, as the sense of Bakkhiccommunity absorbed their individuality, they were wrapped in fawn skins, with wild ivy tangled in theirhair and paint smeared on their faces. As the action intensified, so did their singing and dancing. Wewatched “those poor passionate women” (as Carson calls them in a poem attached to her translation) onall fours, faces daubed as animals, banging staves (the thyrsus) on the wooden stage, and chantingincreasingly murderous lines: “We dance for Bakkhos,/ we dance for death!/ Pentheus’/ death—/ born of asnake, dressed as a woman,/ he took up a thyrsos and followed a bull directly down to Hades./ For thethyrsos is certain death!” Orlando Gough’s brilliant and eclectic score for such irregular lines evokedboth African drumming (lots of thyrsus banging), and Balkan folk-music, perhaps what Euripides wouldhave heard as he composed the play in his Macedonian exile.The Chorus in Bakkhai at the Almeida Theatre, London. Photo credit: Marc Brenner.The design and dress of the performance inevitably recalled the confrontations of the 1960s (like the onesin Berkeley where I was a student). On the one side were the government and university authorities whocalled out the police in their Blue Meanie uniforms, guns and night-sticks: on the other the students andhippies, discoverers and consumers of mind-bending drugs and liberated followers of new, uninhibitedlife-styles (Dionysus was also known as “the liberator”), politically opposed to what the regime stood for,at that time the Vietnam war. Those heady days have long gone, but this production echoed those                                        3 / 6Global Postsbuilding CUNY Communities since 2009http://tags.commons.gc.cuny.educonflicts and also the values of each side: the city with its male-dominated political order versus the wildcountryside where fluctuating sexuality, inebriation and, well… a certain kind of femininity, prevail. Allthis inevitably alluded to Richard Schechner’s influential sixties-based Dionysus in 69 (and Brian dePalma’s film), although the production was blessedly free of Schechner’s audience interaction (thefamous “group grope”): this was superb theatre, not a “happening.” Even in a 1960s-like context,however, one of the most powerful lines of the play is that of the aged Kadmos, in the face of the carnagewrought by this new divinity: “Gods should not resemble humans in their anger.” Does the line by itselfhave the power to tilt the balance of the play against the immensely potent but destructive god and infavour of the various forms of ordinary humanity on display? Perhaps not. But Greek tragedy has rarelyseemed so pertinent or so powerful.Neil Forsyth has degrees from Cambridge, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and theUniversity of California at Berkeley. He is the author of a history of the devil, entitled The Old Enemy:Satan and the Combat Myth, a book about Paradise Lost entitled The Satanic Epic, both published byPrinceton, and a biography of Milton (Oxford: Lion). His numerous articles in learned journals concern arange of topics from Gilgamesh to Dickens and Larkin. One of his essays on Shakespeare films has nowreappeared in a new edition of Macbeth. He has taught at San Francisco State University, UC Berkeley,Bryn Mawr College, the University of Geneva, and is now Professeur Honoraire at the University ofLausanne in Switzerland.European Stages, vol. 6, no. 1 (Spring 2016)Editorial Board:Marvin Carlson, Senior Editor, FounderKrystyna Illakowicz, Co-EditorDominika Laster, Co-Editor                                        4 / 6Global Postsbuilding CUNY Communities since 2009http://tags.commons.gc.cuny.eduKalina Stefanova, Co-EditorEditorial Staff:Elyse Singer, Managing EditorClio Unger, Editorial AssistantAdvisory Board:Joshua AbramsChristopher BalmeMaria DelgadoAllen KuharskyBryce LeaseJennifer Parker-StarbuckMagda Roma?skaLaurence SenelickDaniele VianelloPhyllis ZatlinTable of Contents:1. Hamlet in a Curious Nutshell by Maria Helena Serôdio2. Alvis Hermanis Productions in Latvia and German-Speaking Countries by Ed?te Tisheizere3. The Unknown, the Unexpected, and the Uncanny: A New Lorca, Three New Catalan Productions,and a Few Extras by Maria M. Delgado4. 2015 Dance Week Festival and Contemporary Croatian Dance by Mirna Zagar5. Archives, Classics, and Auras: The 2016 Oslo International Festival by Andrew Friedman6. The Stakes for City Theatres: Linus Tunström’s Farewell to the Uppsala Stadsteater by BryceLease7. Life is Beautiful? or Optimistically About Bulgarian Theatre? by Kalina Stefanova8. The Multiple Dimensions of the Bulgarian ACT Independent Theatre Festival 2015by Angelina Georieva9. Theatre in Berlin, Winter 2015 by Steve Earnest10. Musical Theatre in Berlin, Winter 2015 by Steve Earnest11. Gob Squad’s My Square Lady at the Komische Oper by Clio Unger12. New Productions in Berlin by Yvonne Shafer13. Manifest for Dialogue: Antisocial by Ion M. Tomu?14. A Fall in France by Heather Jeanne Denyer15. The Iliad as an Oratory: A Warning to a Civilization by Ivan Medenica    16. Escaped Alone by Caryl Churchill at the Royal Court Theatre by Rosemary Malague17. Bakkhai at the Almeida Theatre reviewed by Neil Forsythwww.EuropeanStages.org                                        5 / 6Global Postsbuilding CUNY Communities since 2009http://tags.commons.gc.cuny.edueuropeanstages@gc.cuny.eduMartin E. Segal Theatre Center:Frank Hentschker, Executive DirectorMarvin Carlson, Director of PublicationsRebecca Sheahan, Managing Director©2016 by Martin E. Segal Theatre CenterThe Graduate Center CUNY Graduate Center365 Fifth AvenueNew York NY 10016Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)                                        6 / 6

Bakkhai by Euripides at Almeida Theatre, London.

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Bakkhai by Euripides at Almeida Theatre, London.

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Serveur académique lausannois