bacchae

Photo: londontheatrereviews.co.uk

This production is a really clear signal of the new direction that the National Theatre is being taken in under new leadership. A production that successfully reaches a wide range of audience members from school kids to classical literature nerds and speaks to the state of our world. As our national theatre, they should be creating art like this.

As someone with education in classical literature, I have really strong opinions about how Greek Tragedy should be staged today, and I am almost always disappointed by the choices that theatre-makers make. This production, however, very successfully took the key elements of the original text and translated them in a way that is recognisable to a modern audience, meaning that a message can be much better relayed. A bacchic chorus of a wide range of women, with tropes that are recognisable for anyone even slightly engaged in popular culture, and yet calling back to the original characteristics of Euripides’ chorus such as the reason for their travels, bring rhythm to the performance through musical spoken word with a clear calling to elements of hip-hop. They stay on the stage for almost the entirety of the performance, just as the chorus would have in 500BC, taking the same journey as the audience. A flamboyant and hypnotic Dionysus played by Ukweli Roach captivates the audience, as well as the rest of the cast, and plays into modern ideas about what masculinity is (in complete opposite to James McArdle’s Pentheus) to explore the dichotomy between masculine and feminine. Updating a Greek tragedy for a modern audience while keeping its original elements is a tough line to walk but this new version does it extremely well, which is the key to keeping the genre alive and ensuring that it can feel accessible to a new generation of theatre-goers from all walks of life.

While this production was excellently engaged with our contemporary society, I felt by the end that nothing much had been said by the production, or that I hadn’t learned anything. Of course, this is most likely as a result of my education in this genre and that I consider myself more socially and politically engaged than the average person, but I was conscious of the fact that this production mentioned almost every and all social issues it possibly could, eliciting knowing chuckles from the audience, but that no issue was deeply explored or questioned. Watching and reviewing this production is a good test in learning how to analyse a production knowing that you are probably not be the target audience, and it was clear that this production would be a great introduction to socially engaged theatre for a group of school kids studying for their Drama GCSE. I suppose I just have to hope that the more productions like this to come out of the National Theatre, the more diverse audiences we can get through the door and hopefully get more involved in theatre.

A negative or not-so-successful reaction to this production might only be a result of a change in direction for a theatre that has more or less been doing the same thing for decades. There can’t be any harm in our national theatre displaying the full spectrum of theatre that is being created in this country and enriching the industry that we love. While this production may not have been spot on, and may not have had a full house every night, to me it indicates a positive change for the National.