Reviewed by James Karas
The Argo Theatrical Company produced Euripides’ Bacchae at the Ancient Theatre of Dion. It was part of the Olympus Festival centered on the Hellenistic theatre, south of Katerini, Greece.
Director Dimitris Lignadis interprets that
play as an encounter between a fascist Pentheus and a Christ-like Dionysus with
some highly dramatic results.
In the opening scene, a man climbs up a pole
and turns on a light. His is dressed in worker’s khaki clothes and his head is
covered. He intones the opening lines of the play without revealing his face.
We, of course, know that he is Dionysus (Sakis Rouvas) disguised as a Stranger.
His followers who make up the Chorus of bacchants from Lydia appear. They are
dressed in white dresses that struck me as resembling very badly dressed
brides. They perform an orgiastic dance to some wild music, mostly percussion.
The music by Giorgos Poulidis is heavy on rhythmic
beats and dissonance with some haunting melodic pieces. The Chorus gyrates,
rolls on the ground and executes sexually suggestive moves in keeping with the
ecstatic nature of the group. The choreography is by Dafni Asimakopoulou and it
suits Lignadis’ view of the play.
The bacchants swarm onto the Stranger and
tear his clothes off and he appears with white bottoms and naked from the waist
up in a Christ-like pose. This is highly ironic, of course, to see the god of
wine and ecstasy as the epitome of asceticism but it is very effective.
Pentheus (Dimitris Passas), wears a black
uniform, sports a mustache and is reminiscent of a fascist dictator.
Rouvas does quite a good job as Dionysus. His
voice carries well, he has good physical presence and was convincing in the
role.
Passas as Pentheus had the initial advantage
of speaking through a microphone like a dictator addressing a mass rally.
Passas looks prissy and legalistic and does a fine job in providing a contrast
between the logical (him) with the irrational as represented by Dionysus and
the Chorus.
Roula Pateraki was disappointing as Tiresias.
She was wheeled onto the playing area on a cart (Tiresias is blind) and she
delivered her lines in a flat, loud, monotone that made little impression.
Maria Kitsou as Agave had better lines and
more amplitude to display her talents and gave a dramatic performance as
Pentheus’s mother. She ends up murdering her son and brining his head in a bag
in the belief that she is delivering the head of a lion.
The set, designed Eva Nathena, consisted of a
stack of bales of hay as background and a few chairs as props. The scene is in
front of the palace of Thebes and I am not sure about the bales of hay.
Greek Tragedy is notoriously difficult to
produce and a director must strive to avoid giggles and raised eyebrows,
especially when veering away from a traditional approach. Lignadis
unfortunately did evoke some giggles, especially when Agave kicked the bag
containing her son’s head as if she were playing soccer. We heard a smidge of a
Christmas Carol at one point and a “miroloi”, a traditional funeral lamentation
near the end.
The production had some solid performances
and original ideas by Lignadis. In the end, Dionysus hangs the head of the
faithless Pentheus by the light that he lit at the beginning of the play in a
nice touch of connecting the opening and closing of the production.
Partially because of the open-air concept of
the theatre without particularly good acoustics, the actors must speak loudly
or risk not being heard. This does give the performances a stentorian flavour
without the balancing effect of choral passages. The production has many
virtues and an interesting approach but it seems that not all the details of
the consequences of that approach have been thoroughly canvassed.
The Bacchae was produced in Athens in 405 B.C., after Euripides’s death. It
probably premiered at Dion before that date. The present theatre dates from the
third century B.C. and it replaced the original theatre on that site that had
been destroyed. The imaginative leap from a seeing The Bacchae on a
balmy July evening in sight of Mount Olympus to its premiere more than 2400
years ago is a thoroughly pleasant thought. The price of entry in the theatre
at €15 is a bargain by any description.
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