'an intellectually ambitious production
from two Greek drama specialists with real vision'
from two Greek drama specialists with real vision'
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| The poster: artwork after Aubrey Beardsley by Kate Offord. |
Company: Classics Student Drama Group
Date: May, 2000
Venue: Lecture Theatre 1, Queen's Building, University of Exeter, Exeter, DEVON, UK
Review:
‘Playful Tragedy: Meidias reviews the departmental production of Euripides’ Alcestis (Queen’s Building,
Many recent productions of classic drama exhibit a tendency towards re-contextualization. In other words, it has become common to remove plays from their traditional historical or spatial settings and relocate them in different surroundings, with the intention (one presumes) of stimulating a greater range of responses and re-examining the meaning of the drama. Some of these attempts, inevitably, are more successful than others. This reviewer has seen The Duchess of Malfi relocated to a Soho nightclub; a production of Twelfth Night set against a backdrop of the Irish potato famine; a dubious rock-and-roll musical version of Hedda Gabler… and now, Euripides’ tragedy Alcestis presented by the students of Exeter’s Classics Department in the guise of burlesque satyr-drama. A radical project, this, but by no means perverse; for even in antiquity there was some confusion as to the precise nature or genre of Alcestis.
....
...To-day, the play is often labelled ‘pro-satyric’, a title implying that its genre is mixed,. Somewhere between tragedy and satyr. But nevertheless, the events of the plot are strikingly tragic, as a brief glance will show.
The scene is Pherae, in Thessaly . Apollo offers king Admetus the chance to escape death if he can find another willing to die in his place; Admetus’ wife Alcestis is the only volunteer. He accepts, and Alcestis [resently dies, throwing the household into misery and confusion. Amid the obsequies arrives Heracles; oblivious to the lamentation going on around him, he prevails upon Admetus to entertain him and gets embarrassingly drunk. When Heracles realises his mistake, he undertakes to bring alcestis back from the dead, and thus Admetus and his wife are re-united.
The theme of inebriation did, in fact, figure in the satiric genre (as we can see from Cyclops and the fragments of other satyr-plays), but otherwise the familiar elements of tragedy are present: the violation of normal phgilia-relationships among close kin; distortion of marriage and funerary ritual; the ambiguous moral position of the principal characters; death, suffering and lamentation. Even with Alcestis restored to life in the final scene, it is scarcely ‘a laugh a / minute’.
But under directors Arlene Allan and Eleanor OKell, this tragedy was transformed – no ‘pro-satyric’ middle ground here, but unequivocal, full-blown satyr-drama. Euripides’ chorus of old men of Pherae was replaced by a cavorting trhiasos of ithyphallic satyrs, the motifs of sex (even incest!), food and feasting were given exaggerated prominence through out, and the English translation was adapted in such as way as to make it explicitly funny – in the words of the directors, they have ‘endeavoured to make this play comic with modern sensibilities in mind, without distorting the original text beyond what it will bear’. Perhaps Allan and OKell had in mind Demetrius’ description of the satiric-genre as ‘playful tragedy (τραγῷδία παιζούςα)’.
Visually as well as conceptually the production was extremely stylish, with sets and costume clearly based on art nouveau and Aubrey Beardsley’s sensuous interpretation of Classicism. It is a matter for regret that the aesthetic ideals of the designers were not more closely matched by their available budget; still, the limited resources of the theatre were used to the full.
The acting was of a uniformly good standard. Allan and OKell themselves danced in the thiasos, sporting immense phalloi which had been constructed, as all else, with painstaking attention to detail.
James Millen and Victoria Penn, as the doomed couple, combined pathos and pusillanimity to great effect.
John St. Dominic was a delightfully menacing Death, re-appearing later in a different costume as Admetus’ aged father Pheres.
The versatile Alex Perryman filled not one role but three roles (Apollo, Servant and infant Son of Alcestis). Particularly noteworthy was the hilarious performance of Alistair Christie as a swaggering, Tarzan-like Heracles: as an inebriate he was utterly convincing, and his character was the greatest source of humour in the drama.
But I remain unconvinced that Alcestis, as conceived by Euripides, offers much in the way of amusement. The result was ultimately, and – I think inevitably – a jarring mixture of tones. However (lest I seem to be disparaging), this was no rock-and-roll Hedda Gabler, but an intellectually ambitious production from two Greek drama specialists with real vision, which turned out to be more thought-provoking than almost anything of its kind that I have seen. It demonstrated just how far one could legitimately go, without violating artistic integrity or taste, in the interpretation of a Greek play. I look forward to seeing what the same directors will bring to their next project, which promises to be Lucian’s Satirical Sketches.
‘Meidias’ was (at the time) a part-time teacher of Classics and one-time Organist to the Clerkes of St. Giles. He is now a full-time lecturer in Greek tragedy and published on Euripides' plays of 'mixed reversal'.
The Programme:
