Bacchae

It’s always interesting to see the ways that Greek tragedies are reworked for a modern audience.  The Bacchae are a bunch of women, followers of the god Dionysos who serve as the chorus but are the main characters this time.  They are back in Thebes to help Dionysos take revenge for his abandonment by his aunt Agave (Sharon Small) after the death of his mother.  The Bacchae are led by Vida (a fantastic Claire Perkins) who introduces the Bacchae to the audience as individual independent women who have all joined for different reasons, and are all living for pleasure without being ruled by men (except Dionysos that is - to be fair, they do call out for themselves!). When the women of Thebes hear about this, they all begin to join the Bacchae too.  Whilst Dionysos sneaks into Thebes and entraps his half brother King Pentheus (an absolutely fabulous James McArdle) the Bacchae take Agave hostage but she soon becomes the most fanatical of the group and blood thirsty in a way which horrifies some of the Bacchae but enlivens the rest; it doesn't end well for either Agave or Pentheus.  In modern (sweary) language with verse, rhyme and rap and loads of great dance making good use of the huge rotating Olivier stage, this is crowd pleasing stuff, and the youngish audience at the preview we went to were certainly having a great time. 

There are a lot of really good things happening in this production.  The immediacy and modernity of the language worked well, I loved the rap and the way the individual Bacchae were characterised, and the little side jokes.  The dancing was brilliant too.  And great performances with all of the leads.  I had a few issues though. Firstly there was too much exposition for my liking; even in clever rhyme and with bucketloads of attitude it still felt a bit clunky.  Secondly, it was overly simplistic sometimes and didn’t trust us to draw our own conclusions.  Human rights (particularly re women, gender, sexuality and refugees) are at the heart of the play as it is being performed here so it's important, but I felt I was being hit over the head with it sometimes.  I prefer to tease out some of these things for myself.  For example, James McArdle in a ballgown made all the points necessary about gender and toxic masculinity - we didn’t need the clunky dialogue too.  I did like the reference to Trump though and it got a big laugh in the room. 

There are lots of laughs right up to the moment of tragedy, much of it centred around McArdle's Pentheus, although I worried that it undercut the tragedy of the piece. Dionysos is flash, dressed in gold and brings some more light relief. Sharon Small throws herself into the part of Agave, but I felt her tragedy was overshadowed by the laughter.  I liked the little in-jokes about theatre all the way through, together with the reminder that Dionysos is the god of theatre, and we got a tiny bit of extra dance at the very end which was great too.

So overall this was a good night out, and kept me entertained all the way through, even though (as the Bacchae point out themselves), this is yet another play without an interval.  The audience was younger than average and seemed to love it so maybe I am just being a bit grumpy, but with some judicious editing this could be great, rather than just good.

Radical Harmony: Neo Impressionists

Earlier in the day we visited this exhibition at the National Gallery  It was interesting to see the ways that this style was developed and used and it was a bit strange to see so many variations of this one  movement in one place. I hadn’t known about the political views and aims of the movement and artists and I enjoyed seeing the work on different topics rather than just landscapes.  

For example I really liked this one by Luce idealising foundry workers which reminds me a bit of  soviet era propaganda (although it was hung unironically in the management offices of an iron ore company for years, so maybe the message wasn't coming across very well).

This was one of my favourites which getting is as close as you can get to abstract whilst still being neo-impressionist (Henry van de Velde, Seashore (Beach at Blankenberge) ) 

And it was interesting to see Van Gogh's (The Sower) flirtation with this approach too.