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What do you think The Bacchae is about?
Mark Fisher
August 14, 2007 11:23 AM
The Bacchae
Coochie coochie coo ... Tony Curran and Alan Cummings in The Bacchae. Photograph: Murdo Macleod
What's The Bacchae about? It seems it depends on what paper you read. If you take the Daily Telegraph, you will believe it is about "the horrors of religious fundamentalism still being unleashed on the world today". That's the assessment of Charles Spencer who sees in the National Theatre of Scotland production a metaphor for the global tensions of 2007.
If, on the other hand, you are a reader of The Scotsman, you will be in no doubt that Euripides was writing about the challenges to a civic society. In her assessment of the show, Joyce McMillan argued it is "a political parable about the terrible fate that awaits a state which cannot acknowledge and find a balance between the different aspects of human nature."
Or maybe you read my over-night review in the Scotland on Sunday. If so, you'll see the production as a clever bit of programming by Jonathan Mills, artistic director of the Edinburgh International Festival: a play about the bacchanalian excesses of festivals in which the hangover is never far behind the party. "As the Scottish capital heaves with revellers, drinking in the cultural excesses of the world's biggest arts festival, The Bacchae stands both as a defiant shout of "yah-boo-sucks" to those who would rather the whole shebang was buttoned up and put away, and as a salutary warning to the fun-seekers that it is possible to have too much of a good thing," I claimed.
If you stick with the Guardian, however, you will know, like Michael Billington, that it is about "the dangers of repression" and the "fatal result of surrendering to animalistic impulses".
So which is it? Fundamentalism, civic society, festivals or psychological repression? The answer is yes to all of the above. The reason The Bacchae is a classic - 2412 years old and going strong - is that it reveals itself afresh to each new generation and even, in this case, each new viewer. Those of us who have written about this production have revealed our own pre-occupations - mine with the nature of festivals, McMillan's with society's political make-up, and so on - but each reaction is valid. The Bacchae is big enough to take them all.
It's the same with a great little show running at the Pleasance called La Femme est Morte. In Euripides' Hippolytus and Racine's Phèdre, the spirited actors of Shalimar have found a parable about today's celebrity culture and the war in Iraq. They show us the ancient Greek myth filtered through the world of Britney Spears and George W Bush. And they are thrillingly right.
So if they are so open to interpretation, what do these classics mean to you? Is there an aspect of John Tiffany's staging of The Bacchae, for example, that the critics have missed? Or have you come across different meanings in other versions?
What do you think The Bacchae is about?
Mark Fisher
August 14, 2007 11:23 AM
The Bacchae
Coochie coochie coo ... Tony Curran and Alan Cummings in The Bacchae. Photograph: Murdo Macleod
What's The Bacchae about? It seems it depends on what paper you read. If you take the Daily Telegraph, you will believe it is about "the horrors of religious fundamentalism still being unleashed on the world today". That's the assessment of Charles Spencer who sees in the National Theatre of Scotland production a metaphor for the global tensions of 2007.
If, on the other hand, you are a reader of The Scotsman, you will be in no doubt that Euripides was writing about the challenges to a civic society. In her assessment of the show, Joyce McMillan argued it is "a political parable about the terrible fate that awaits a state which cannot acknowledge and find a balance between the different aspects of human nature."
Or maybe you read my over-night review in the Scotland on Sunday. If so, you'll see the production as a clever bit of programming by Jonathan Mills, artistic director of the Edinburgh International Festival: a play about the bacchanalian excesses of festivals in which the hangover is never far behind the party. "As the Scottish capital heaves with revellers, drinking in the cultural excesses of the world's biggest arts festival, The Bacchae stands both as a defiant shout of "yah-boo-sucks" to those who would rather the whole shebang was buttoned up and put away, and as a salutary warning to the fun-seekers that it is possible to have too much of a good thing," I claimed.
If you stick with the Guardian, however, you will know, like Michael Billington, that it is about "the dangers of repression" and the "fatal result of surrendering to animalistic impulses".
So which is it? Fundamentalism, civic society, festivals or psychological repression? The answer is yes to all of the above. The reason The Bacchae is a classic - 2412 years old and going strong - is that it reveals itself afresh to each new generation and even, in this case, each new viewer. Those of us who have written about this production have revealed our own pre-occupations - mine with the nature of festivals, McMillan's with society's political make-up, and so on - but each reaction is valid. The Bacchae is big enough to take them all.
It's the same with a great little show running at the Pleasance called La Femme est Morte. In Euripides' Hippolytus and Racine's Phèdre, the spirited actors of Shalimar have found a parable about today's celebrity culture and the war in Iraq. They show us the ancient Greek myth filtered through the world of Britney Spears and George W Bush. And they are thrillingly right.
So if they are so open to interpretation, what do these classics mean to you? Is there an aspect of John Tiffany's staging of The Bacchae, for example, that the critics have missed? Or have you come across different meanings in other versions?
posted by SWC at 7:02 AM
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