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Written by Nigel Bryant (Head of Drama)
In July 2007 the Drama Department took its 2006 production of Euripides’ The Bacchae to perform on the Greek island of Naxos.
It was a logistical and artistic challenge on an epic scale. Not just the cast of 23 but the whole production – set, costumes, lighting equipment, sound equipment, props, wigs, make-up, musical instruments and everything but the kitchen sink to create a viable backstage – had to find its way to the middle of the Aegean Sea, to perform a Greek play in English in two entirely dissimilar venues to audiences of whom many would speak little or none of the play's language.
For the full story of this exciting venture and further illustrations, click here, or, for an abbreviated account, follow the links below.
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Extraordinary Circumstances
It was truly an extraordinary experience. At every stage resourcefulness and endurance were tested as much as skill, and on four occasions the whole project teetered on the brink.
Thanks to a bizarre error by the ferry company, the van packed full of the crucial equipment was involved in a frantic race across France and Italy (straight out of Around the World in Eighty Days) to meet near-impossible sailing times across the Adriatic and Aegean. Only a two-mile, ticket-in-hand sprint at the port of Ancona by driver, Ray “Phileas Fogg” Bethley, saved the day and got the production to the right side of the sea.
And once on the wildly beautiful island, all three performances almost failed to happen: in nerve-shredding scenes - a mixture of horror and high farce - it took eleventh-hour installation of a mains supply at the first venue and death-defying connection of cables to a telegraph pole at the second, to give us power and make performance possible! |
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What performances they were! The amazing venues drew from the cast work which would never be seen in a school, making these performances of The Bacchae wholly different from the Ellis Theatre production in November.
The first performance took place in a mountainside amphitheatre, astonishingly built just last year by the people of the inland village of Filoti; the marble-clad tiers of seats gazed out over the stage to a stunningly beautiful range of crags including none other than Mount Zeus. The need to fill the great bowl of rock and sky was for the cast an inspiration and an education like no other: it was a magnificent, exhilarating night.
The production then moved for second and third performances to the archaeological site at Yria, just outside the main town of Naxos. This, set low down in reedy marshes, was quite different to the mountains of Filoti. Yria is a sanctuary dedicated to none other than Dionysus, the god at the centre of Euripides’ play. It is, indeed, the most important temple to Dionysus in the whole of the Greek world, and as the sun set behind the reeds, the cast was borne away by the spirit of the place and the event was spell-binding and spell-bound.
In all the intimate mystery of this shadowy, marshy place Pip Brignall was a Dionysus possessed, and the Chorus unleashed energies never seen in comfy, cushioned Marlborough. James Blaszkowski (Pentheus) had never lost his cool so wholly, never been so in command of pace and rhythm; Harry Scott, always outstanding as the Herdsman, reached an extra level - astonishing for his years! Nick Codrington told the Messenger’s story with a new-found fluency and power: it was riveting; and in the final scene between Cadmus and Agauë – almost impossibly demanding of anyone, let alone two teenagers – Josh Allott and Seraphina d’Arby mined seams of raw emotion that no-one could expect of performers their age. Spiritually, it was like throwing petrol on a bonfire. There was a depth of understanding, a one-ness of play and performance, that happens only a few times in a lifetime. Audiences ecstatic.
The Bacchae is one of the greatest plays ever written. We’ve performed it where it was meant to be. It’s been, the cast say, “a unique experience”, “an unforgettable time”. Indeed it was.
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