Almeida, LondonJames Macdonald’s production at the Almeida offers clarity and imaginative acting, yet falls short of the rage and frenzy that Euripides’ masterpiece demandsHaving started with a radically reimagined Oresteia, the Almeida’s Greeks season continues with a more orthodox version of Euripides’ late masterpiece. James Macdonald’s production is impeccably clear, Anne Carson’s new text is springy and alive and the acting is fine. Yet, while I admired the evening, I never felt I had been transported into a world of passion and terror.The impact of the play depends on its confrontation of violently opposed forces. The god Dionysos comes to Thebes in human form, turns its female citizens into militant devotees and comes to represent ecstasy, liberation and transcendence. Meanwhile Pentheus, the Theban king, stands for rigidity, order and control and is ultimately destroyed by the very qualities he has denied. You can read the play in myriad ways: as a Freudian drama about the dangers of sexual repression or as a political fable about the overthrow of an incipiently fascist state. But the great thing about the play is its ambivalence: as the classical scholar Edith Hall once wrote, all Euripides proves is “that Dionysos and our relationship to him are ultimately unknowable.” Continue reading...
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