{"id":182,"date":"2017-10-14T15:52:51","date_gmt":"2017-10-14T15:52:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/16\/?p=182"},"modified":"2022-02-28T21:06:22","modified_gmt":"2022-02-28T21:06:22","slug":"the-universal-balancing-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/16\/the-universal-balancing-act\/","title":{"rendered":"The Universal Balancing Act"},"content":{"rendered":"

Patricia Keeney*<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Bakkhai<\/em>. Written by Euripides. Translated by Anne Carson. Directed by Jillian Keiley. Scenic Design: Shawn Kerwin. Lighting Design: Cimmeron Meyer. Composer: Veda Hille. Sound Design Don Ellis. Music Director: Shelley Hanson. Major Actors: Graham Abbey. Nigel Bennett. Mac Fyfe. Gordon S. Miller. Lucy Peacock. Produced at the Stratford Festival in Stratford, Ontario, Canada. Playing June through October 2017.<\/p>\n

A raised red mouth, centre stage, is the bright, bloody platform around which a wild story of women rages. This vaginal design announces intention. You anticipate a feminist Bakkhai<\/em>. And you hope it is not too hysterical. Program notes research the history of rape, ask who owns a woman\u2019s orgasm, warn of patriarchy in crisis.<\/p>\n

Happily, director Jillian Keiley recognizes the play as public dream (Joseph Campbell\u2019s definition of myth), admitting that \u201cwhen we tried to force the play into definitive meaning,\u201d whether about religion or women\u2019s rights (an interpretation roundly opposed by translator and poet, Anne Carson), it did not work. Rather, this Bakkhai <\/em>is allowed to dream its own dream, interpretation belonging to each watcher, under the hypnotic spell of performance.<\/p>\n

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Lucy Peacock as Agave<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

First to slither onstage is \u201cthe stranger from Lydia,\u201d a perfect androgen, the god in human form, Dionysos (also called Bakkhos)\u2014variously ecstasy, instinct, libido, wine and unbridled good times, though easily tipped into violence and madness. He is a daimon<\/em> in Carson\u2019s version and this element adds a trickster aspect to his nature, one that manipulates human beings, driving them into both positive and negative excesses. Actor Mac Fyfe\u2019s god in disguise is a sinewy chameleon, wily and seductively bisexual, with controlled swagger and muted strength. As befits a deity on earth, his power is electric, light or lightning, it can nourish or kill in a flash.<\/p>\n

He argues that Pentheus, King of Thebes, does not acknowledge him or his followers, the Bakkhai; that Pentheus denies he is born of the god Zeus and the woman Semele, daughter of Kadmos, founder of Thebes. What complicates matters here is that the god\u2019s birth happened twice. When Semele looked upon the undisguised divinity of Zeus (a serious transgression in the myth), she was instantly incinerated with one of his thunderbolts. However, he managed to save his divine son by snatching him from her womb and inserting the fetus into his own thigh, thereby completing his child\u2019s gestation as a god.<\/p>\n

Is Dionysos human or divine . . . or both? This urgent birther question animates the play. Trying to sort it out, Stratford\u2019s Bakkhai<\/em> writhes through the labyrinthine contradictions of all self-respecting myth.<\/p>\n

One of the spectacular successes of the Stratford production is the chorus. So often in contemporary mountings of Greek classics, and especially in reading these plays, the chorus serves merely to explain and provide background. It is reduced to filler on the page or dead time on the stage, despite the importance of what it is doing. The active life of the chorus in Greek drama\u2014its animated music and dance, its colour and energy\u2014are often forgotten, muted and diminished, usually through a reverential attention to text.<\/p>\n

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Members of the chorus<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Stratford\u2019s Bakkhai<\/em>\u2014a diaphanous flow of merging blues, reds and greens\u2014whirl into throbbing rhythms, wielding their thyrsi, the long pine cone rods of divine following. The very enablers of dramatic action, they embody the power of the female tribe in strong choreographed moves.<\/p>\n

Soft and sensuous in dappled light they skip towards Agave (mother of Pentheus), adore and adorn her, in hypnotic poses, seething with pleasure, kissing each other, lilting irresistibly, declaring green is good and nature is sexy.<\/p>\n

In shorts and dark glasses Tiresias, the prophet\u2014old and blind and, so often in classical drama, the bringer of bad news\u2014comes staggering in drunk, chirping to his companion Kadmos, \u201cYou\u2019re as young as you feel.\u201d Both of them jauntily sport their version of Bakkhic fashion: animal skins over T-shirts and leafy headgear, prompting Pentheus, \u201cthe suit,\u201d to remark \u201cGrandfather, you look like a lampshade.\u201d<\/p>\n

The production takes its sardonic tone from Anne Carson\u2019s translation. Renowned classicist and cutting edge Canadian poet, she performs a balancing act, prancing her Bakkhai<\/em> adroitly on the borders between satire and desire. In the choral odes, she is poetically dazzling.\u00a0 Occasionally, she goes too quickly for the laugh and risks tumbling into farce, thereby diluting the play\u2019s deeper struggle between reason and passion.<\/p>\n

Tiresius and Kadmos are true believers, insisting they will dance for Dionysos because it is the right thing to do. And they are much more fun than the humorless Pentheus, played too narrowly by Gordon S. Miller, too stereotypically cold, efficient and fussily dictatorial: Mr. State Control. Nevertheless, he does snap out some of the slickest humor in Carson\u2019s translation. Referring to rumors of the disruptive activity that threatens to undermine all good order and traditional feminine function, he complains \u201cthere\u2019s a lot of wine involved and creeping off into corners with men . . . they call themselves a prayer group.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here, Carson gets too clever with the original. To call the Bakkhai a prayer group when we are really talking of priestesses is to invoke both esoteric New Age extravagances and\/or right wing fanaticism. Certainly, Tiresius and Kadmos are not convinced. \u201cDionysos is going to be big,\u201d they enthuse, citing Bakkhic states of mind, how when the god enters your body, you hear the future.<\/p>\n

The translation now streamlines language, warning the elders that you do not mess around with Dionysian power. Pentheus dismisses them with an airy \u201cGo play your Bakkhic burlesque.\u201d The two wise and joyful old men think he is unhinged. By contrast, the chorus exudes, in welcoming song, how Dionysos is a being of miracles, how smiling women flock to his mountain retreat.<\/p>\n

A lot happens in quick succession. Pentheus attempts to capture the stranger from Lydia who warns him of disaster. Drums thunder, as the Bakkhai\u2014lit red and shaking in ecstasy\u2014receive Dionysos down from Olympus, while a herdsman reports to Pentheus of rampages in the hills. Led by Agave, the aroused women\u2014their hair in flames that do not burn\u2014have slaughtered cattle, suckled wolf cubs. Such news motivates Pentheus to save the Bakkhai. The stranger from Lydia (Dionysos in disguise) tries to calm him. \u201cTake a breath Pentheus . . . in through the nose. . . . You listen but do not hear.\u201d Bland as a therapist, he admonishes the neurotic little ruler, in an instance of Carson\u2019s text at its best, ironically energized, casually funny.<\/p>\n

Camouflaging himself as a woman to spy on Bakkhic doings, Pentheus is thrilled but worried he will be mocked. The transformation is an erotic transgendered moment of dramatic daring and barely suppressed snickering\u2014especially when the Lydian stranger slickly nips under the king\u2019s long dress to whip off his shorts\u2014all performed to the heavy breathing of the chorus, intoning lasciviously, \u201cWho does not love this feeling. . . .\u201d<\/p>\n

Pentheus recognizes Dionysos in his terrible power. The Bakkhai spin and bang their thyrsi, music driving relentlessly. All is raw and blunt and ominous.<\/p>\n

Trapped in his dreadful error, exposed to the Bakkhai, Pentheus falls from a giant pine, yelping and sobbing into their fury. Agave, deranged by Bakkhos, launches herself first, ripping her son\u2019s arm. Then, the Bakkhai attack, tearing him limb from limb, eventually playing ball with his body parts. Agave picks up the bodiless head, a victory trophy in her hands.<\/p>\n

Bitter and relentless, the chorus chant, \u201cWe dance for Bakkhos. We dance for death.\u201d<\/p>\n

These outrages are all reported. What is not reported is the impossible grief in which Agave and Kadmos are immersed. What should be painfully suggested is too literally enacted: the mother with her son\u2019s head only recognized as the god\u2019s spell wears off and we return to modern dress. Agave strips down to tight spandex tube and heels, as restricted in fact and vision as her dead son.<\/p>\n

Video<\/h6>\n