Theater Review: A perverse, but muddled Bacchae in Brooklyn

The Bacchae

Written by Euripides

Directed by Anne Bogart

Starring Ellen Lauren and Akiko Aizawa

SITI Company

Brooklyn Academy of Music

October 6, 2018

The NYC-based SITI Company was founded in 1992 to “redefine and revitalize contemporary theater in the United States through an emphasis on international cultural exchange, training, and collaboration” thus “providing a gymnasium-for-the-soul”. Their productions have included Japanese drama, performance art, and a play based on the quotes of wacky composer John Cage. I am not sure what all of this means, but they did put on a provocative version of Euripides The Bacchae at BAM in October. It would have been even more cool to see it at its premiere in September at the Getty Villa in Los Angeles, set amidst Greek sculpture and architecture. The performance used a literal translation of the plot, but played around with both gender and culture in its presentation, not always to clear effect.

The play centers on a petulant god Dionysus (here played by a woman, the intense Ellen Lauren) who, angered by the Thebans’ non-acknowledgement of his divine status as Zeus’ son, bewitches their women.

These wild women (the Bacchae) run away from their families and engage in all sorts of drunken, crazed perversities in the mountains. They rip apart animals, cavort with snakes, etc. The king’s grandson Pentheus strives to infiltrate this bacchanal and bring the women to their senses, but is instead treed and torn apart by the women. Agave, his mother, wanders around with his severed head, thinking it is an animal head, but in a profound ending scene, comes to her senses and realizes she has decapitated her son. In the end, the Bacchae are banished, the king and his family are turned into snakes, and Dionysus has his revenge.

This decadent plot highlights Euripides’ criticism of Greek religious beliefs, as his god becomes no more than a petulant, jealous meddler. We think of the classical Greeks as the progenitors of modern western humanism, but in fact they had a complex relationship with religion that overlaid their development of philosophy, political theory, etc. Polytheistic like most cultures (the Jews excepted), they certainly did not let their gods rule their politics or laws as the Egyptians or earlier cultures did. Greek drama frequently centers on hubris, where mortals overstep their limitations (think of Oedipus). This is often framed as ignoring the gods’ wills, but when I see these dramas, the gods often seem more like a metaphor for some ideal standard of behavior, rather than as truly ruling, determinative rulers of the world. And they are not always so ideal, possessing human’s frailties in a way not seen in most traditional religions. Perhaps one exception is the way the Jewish God is portrayed early in the Bible, where He exhibits petulance, vengefulness, etc. just like the Greek’s gods do centuries later. In a way, The Bacchae’s point is to play with this idea, portraying a god who exhibits very unattractive human failings like jealousy, envy, and revenge. That in the end Dionysus banishes and destroys the humans is yet another jolting reminder to the Greeks to not get too full of themselves.

The SITI company’s presentation did not really bring a clear point of view to this somewhat cryptic play. This would have been nice so I could meditate on some sort of interpretation or link to our culture. There were certainly some interesting devices used. There was experimentation with gender, as the chorus of (traditionally female) Bacchae was played by a mixed group of men and women wearing long black skirts, and Dionysus was played by a woman.  This company focuses on cross-cultural drama, so the queen Agave delivers her long ending speech in Japanese (without translation or supratitles), as she gradually recovers from madness to realize that she has killed her son.

In the director’s notes, company founder Anne Bogart states “In our belief that the theater at its best transcends language; it is our hope that the eloquence of her emotional intensity will communicate with clarity to our audiences.”  This device certainly focused me on the intense acting of Akiko Aizawa rather than on following a translated text, but here I missed Euripides’ poetry. The production played up the intensity, perversity, and shock of the drama, and the ending Japanese monologue reminded me of an intense Samurai episode from Kurosawa’s movie Ran. But how did these devices better portray Euripides’ intent, which is still debated among scholars? This play demands a strong directorial point of view, and while the SITI’s presentation had some gimmicks and was played with verve and intensity, it in the end did not shine much light on the drama itself.