SITE GUIDE
SEARCH
REVIEWS
REVIEW ARCHIVES
ADVERTISING AT CURTAINUP
FEATURES
NEWS
Etcetera and
Short Term Listings
LISTINGS
Broadway
Off-Broadway
NYC Restaurants
BOOKS and CDs
OTHER PLACES
Berkshires
London
California
New Jersey
DC
Connecticut
Philadelphia
Elsewhere
QUOTES
TKTS
PLAYWRIGHTS' ALBUMS
LETTERS TO EDITOR
FILM
LINKS
MISCELLANEOUS
Free Updates
Masthead
Writing for Us
A CurtainUp 
London Review
London ReviewBakkhai
|
"Women and wine - a toxic combination!" — Pentheus
|
Ben Whishaw as Dionysus and Bertie Carvel as Pentheus (Photo: Marc Brenner) |
Dionysus has had his deity and his royal inheritance denied by his mortal mother Semele's three sisters Agave, Autonoe and Ino, daughters of Cadmus. Semele is killed by a jealous Hera after Zeus has made Semele pregnant. The thunderbolt that kills Semele delivers the boy Dionysus. Semele's sister Agave is Pentheus' mother. So at the beginning of the play, Dionysus takes human form to return to Thebes to seek vengeance for his mother and himself.
Ben Whishaw is this ethereal creature, full of strange circling arm movements which move his draped toga like top in curious ways. With long dark hair tied back and later wearing a long green dress, he is like a bearded woman or a Jesus figure or a rock star and is magnetically attractive to women and probably men as well.
His revenge, like the Pied Piper, is to lure the women of Thebes up into the mountains to celebrate his rites of sex and music and wine. Agave and her sisters are amongst these women. Meanwhile Pentheus is doing his utmost to counter this subculture. When he meets his grandfather Cadmus (Kevin Harvey) and the blind seer Tiresias (Ben Whishaw again) dressed as druids, he is in a business suit and every inch the politician.
As the equivalent of the Greek chorus, the women, the Bacchae, sing or speak their lines. The music is modern classical and often atonal and discordant but because of the spoken/sung combination the words have clarity. Think Philip Glass. There were moments when I thought I had stumbled into a modern opera which was not exactly to my taste. I spent much time trying to work out which of the women was Agave and failed to identify her for reasons which become apparent later in the play. Despite the slightly odd music, the acting performances of Whishaw and Carvel are mesmerizing and not to be missed.
Antony Macdonald's set is a mountainscape but with imposing, pitch black contours silhouetted in front of the bare bricks of the theatre back wall. The clothes of the Bacchae have a fawn (the baby deer not just the colour) skin and they wear headdresses made of laurels and other greenery. The women carry a thyrsus, a staff made of fennel decorated with vines and usually topped with a pinecone but after battle, the severed head of a victim.
Director James Macdonald has directed Ben Whishaw before for Mike Bartlett and the two obviously work extremely well together to allow this special actor full range in a performance I could not take my eyes off for one minute.
Poet Anne Carson's lucid version of The Bacchae is entitled Bakkhai; both are transliteration from the Greek alphabet so the spelling matters not. Later in the play she often refers to Dionysus as Bacchus, his Roman equivalent. So the Bacchae were the women followers of Bacchus or Dionysus. Carson's adaptation has words of relevance but is a modern interpretation with modern expression. Her play makes me want to see more. We may think the brutality of the Bacchae hasn't a modern parallel but we only have to think about the so-called Islamic State executions of hostages to find one.
I have never really been a fan of the Greek tragedy, and even less of any comedy, but this production of Bakkhai resonates with modern family discord, with belief systems and its issues are finely balanced between right and wrong, so it stimulates your imagination.
The Almeida under Rupert Goold has the vision of a National Theatre, happily combined with the creativity of the avant garde.
|
Subscribe to our FREE email updates with a note from editor Elyse Sommer about additions to the website -- with main page hot links to the latest features posted at our numerous locations. To subscribe,
E-mail: esommer@curtainup.comesommer@curtainup.com
put SUBSCRIBE CURTAINUP EMAIL UPDATE in the subject line and your full name and email address in the body of the message -- if you can spare a minute, tell us how you came to Curtain Up and from what part of the country. |
| Bakkhai
Written by Euripides In a new version by Anne Carson Directed by James Macdonald Starring: Ben Whishaw, Bertie Carvel, Kevin Harvey With: Amiera Dawlish, Aryhan Galieva, Eugenia Georieva, Kaisa Hammerlund, Helen Hobson, Hazel Holder, Melanie La Barrie, Elinor Lawless, Catherine May, Belinda Sykes Designer: Antony McDonald Lighting: Peter Mumford Choreography: Jonathan Burrowes, Gillie Kleiman Sound: Paul Arditti Musical Direction: Lindy Tennent-Brown Running time: One hour 45 minutes with no interval Box Office 020 7359 4404 Booking to 19th September 2015 Reviewed by Lizzie Loveridge based on 8th August 2015 matinee performance at the Almeida, Upper Street, Islington, London N1 1TA (Tube: The Angel) |
|
REVIEW FEEDBACK Highlight one of the responses below and click "copy" or"CTRL+C"
Paste the highlighted text into the subject line (CTRL+ V): Feel free to add detailed comments in the body of the email . . . also the names and emails of any friends to whom you'd like us to forward a copy of this review. |
