The Bacchae
by Philip Vellacott
Violence and revenge counterbalance sex and joy in this Euripides masterpiece. The repressive tyrant of middle-eastern state seeks to crush all opposition to his deranged will. The forces of liberation are at hand.
The Bacchae is the most modern play you will see this year. Its message is timeless, highlighting the struggle between freedom, sexual and otherwise, and subjugation, between true happiness and slavery. Megalomania is confronted by the beauty of the human spirit.
If you are looking for a play about Ancient Greece you will not find it here. This drama is focused on every man at every time in a world whose mysteries are infinite because they are the simple ones of common human experience. The struggle against darkness makes us free.
Dionysus, half God, half man, has travelled far, adored by his female worshippers - the Bacchae. Pentheus, the unbalanced dictator of Thebes, despises the Dionysian ideology of liberation. His defiance of Dionysus is at first confronted by the removal of the women of Thebes to the mountains where they cavort orgiastically in a parody of Dionysian liberation. In fury Pentheus attempts unsuccessfully to imprison the God, who awakens Pentheus’s salacious interest in the cavorting revellers. What follows is perhaps one of the most bloody and brutal denouements to be found in Western Drama.
This masterpiece is from the clear dawn of a dramatic tradition which we inherit today.
We have, appropriately, a cast of classic proportions: Jeff Gardiner is Bacchae/Dionysus and Nick Winford plays Pentheus. They are supported by Alan Tracey as Teireseus, Bill Fenton - Cadmus and Trish Moram - Agauë, with Chris Dangerfield, Mark Bellchambers and Ron Covey, a powerful new member.
Crucial to the play is the Chorus. You will find our female Bacchae supremely well equipped to establish the themes of sexual and personal liberation, in character and dance. Here again we have established performers and committed newcomers.
Miles Beauchamp is our highly experienced set designer and the exceptional costumes are by Gary Andrews. Stage Management is in the very safe hands of Jacquie Redfern.
Please join us in our timeless adventure. Our production will be explicit but never gratuitous, and certainly never dull.
