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Magazine
Basic instincts
ANNA SUJATHA MATHAI
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Euripides’ “Bacchae” is as thrilling now as it was in the fifth century B.C.
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‘The Bacchae’ is a story, which speaks directly and truthfully to the heart of what it means to be human.
A few weeks ago, we were staying with a Scottish family, in their home overlooking Loch Long, as it flowed rapturously into the wide waters of the Clyde Estuary, when our hosts made a wonderful suggestion. They wanted us to see Euripides’ Greek drama, “The Bacchae”, in a new version by David Greig, at the Theatre Royal in Glasgow.
The National Theatre of Scotland had swept the boards with this thrilling version of Euripides’ coup de theatre at the Edinburgh Festival. So we drove along by the waters of Loch Lomond into Glasgow to see the play.
When Euripides died in Macedonia in 406 B.C, an exile from his beloved Athens, the play “The Bacchae”, was found among his papers, and was performed posthumously in Athens. This play is about Dionysus, God of Theatre, shaking the very foundations of an ordered society, calling on humans to recognise the wildness, spontaneity, the instinctive (as against learned), the elemental forces of nature; the breaking down of barriers of gender; wisdom rather than mere cleverness or knowledge!
The play
Dionysus, the God of Wine, was half-human, born of Semele, who was seduced by Zeus, disguised as a thunderbolt. She died of an ‘electric shock’ when he revealed himself to her. The basic events of “Bacchae” — Dionysus’ miraculous birth, his return to Thebes, and the punishment of King Pentheus, who would not accept or recognise him — would have been familiar to that first audience. They had the extra thrill of watching the play in the god’s own theatre, next to his shrine in Athens, and of participating in a Festival in his honour. The atmosphere was probably a mixture of sacred solemnity and hilarity and hysteria
The reason why David Greig’s contemporary version, with its racy language and humour, still thrills us after nearly 2,500 years is that it forces us to face the hidden bedrock of instinct, natural impulse, wildness, and the elemental forces that still play themselves out in the theatre of our own being.
When Dionysus (half man, half woman; I thought of our own wonderful concept of Ardhanarishwara) arrives upside down, and somewhat naked, from the Heavens onto the stage, we are shocked into a more alert state of consciousness. He comes to ask the people of Thebes to recognise his divinity and what he stands for, as well as acknowledge his half human-half divine birth. He comes with the Maenads who, in this version, are Black Gospel singers! They act as the Chorus.
But Pentheus, ruler of Thebes, rejects Dionysus. And certainly, Dionysus is hard to fit into any preconceived notions. He is dressed as a pretty young woman and claims to come from the East, which was, for Greeks, the land of the barbarians.
Dionysus constantly slides between male and female; between outsider and insider; between God and man and beast; between East and West. He breaks down all the barriers, tears off all the labels. In the original production, all the characters had on masks, and the mask of Dionysus was a smiling face throughout. Pentheus, at first, rejects the call to wildness, ecstasy, and abandon, which leads to wisdom. Later, he agrees to spy on the Maenads (in a moving scene where he dresses as a woman) spying rather than truly seeing. But Dionysus has plotted a terrible revenge for him. Pentheus is torn to pieces by his mother, Agave, and the Maenads, whose gentle sexuality has turned to frenzied violence.
How could a mother kill her own son? She did not recognise him in female clothes. Also: “Ecstatic femininity has passions, not loyalties.” The Delphic Oracle commands: “Know yourself.” Pentheus has always defined himself as ‘son of a royal dynasty, ruler of Thebes.’ But your name and heritage is not who you are!
Contemporary version
Alan Cumming, as Dionysus, enthrals us with his quirky sexuality, energy and charm. You can feel the electricity from which he was generated! Pentheus, dressed as a woman, when he goes to spy on the Maenads, is excellently played, with uneasy masculinity masquerading in womanly charm!
The Black gospel singers (who are the Maenads, and make up the Chorus) and their music was somewhat disappointing, as it seemed to be made up of sweet and sentimental rhythms, not the sexually haunting Blues and Soul Music which, I felt, would have been far more appropriate and exciting.
When Dionysus was worshipped in the theatre, which was his only temple, his statue had to be carried by a female devotee ‘who had herself been carried away, like the Bacchae, by the black flame of mystic madness.’ This Chorus is not possessed by that black flame!
Interestingly, Greig suggests that the treatment of religion in the Greek tragedies helps account for their longevity. “They speak the truth about what it is to be human and I think they do that partly because they came before Judaeo-Christian morality. It is a pagan world-view: they have no illusions; they do not believe that the Gods are compassionate... ‘The Bacchae’ is a story, which speaks directly and truthfully to the heart of what it means to be human. It asks us to recognise and license the Dionysian impulse within us — the irrational, the sensual, the sexual — and warns us of what might happen to society if we don’t.”
The play, frighteningly and thrillingly, shows that the individual and society can collapse and degenerate if the inner self is ignored. Simon Goldhill, Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge says: “The Bacchae offers the darkest as well as the most lurid and seductive image of the fragility of civilisation.”
All Greek tragedy seeks to explore the mystery of human life and relationships, and how human fate springs from within, as much as from the Gods. I felt enriched and enthralled by this experience, which I shared with the Greek audience of 406 B.C.
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