Following
Robert Icke’s radical Oresteia (widely praised and now set to transfer to Trafalgar Studios), the second production in the “Almeida Greeks”
season is James Macdonald’s take on Euripides’s Bakkhai. The
production is, of course, highly anticipated, not least because of its pairing
of Ben Whishaw as Dionysos and Bertie Carvel as Pentheus, the cousins whose
conflict embodies an archetypal face-off between wildness and rationality. Like
Icke’s, the production proves a mixed offering ultimately, with some
questionable elements combined with startling moments that serve the primal
weirdness and danger of the text well. “On some level,” as Carvel has wryly noted
in interview, “Bakkhai is just a family drama where someone
said something nasty a couple of generations ago and this is the revenge.”
Macdonald
was responsible for one of my all-time favourite Almeida productions in
A Delicate Balance (2011) but he doesn’t manage to bring quite
the same level of total assurance to this venture. At times - the report of
Pentheus death, for one - the proceedings are surprisingly dull and feel under-directed.
Despite such problems of pace, however, the production’s assets include a sound
translation by Anne Carson that boasts some of the qualities of her recent Antigone:
intelligence, clarity, occasional wry humour. (“Man against Gods? Never
works.”) With a spare design by Antony McDonald, and a predominantly traditional approach overall, the production also avoids the
elements of Warner/van Hove pastiche that slightly marred Oresteia
for me. (No screens! No mics! No pop songs, yay!)
The
apportioning of roles harks back to Greek models, with Carvel and Whishaw supplementing
their Pentheus/Dionysos double with turns as Tiresias and Messenger (Whishaw)
and Agave (Carvel). Kevin Harvey plays Kadmos and Shepherd, and the cast is completed by a formidable ten-strong female
Chorus: Amiera Darwish, Aruhan Galieva, Eugenia Georgieva, Kaisa Hammarlund,
Helen Hobson, Hazel Holder, Melanie La Barrie, Elinor Lawless, Catherine May, and
Belinda Sykes.
The
ululations, keening and chants of this posse (compositions by Orlando Gough) are
dividing opinion: the guy seated to my left sighed and put his head in his hands
at the women’s every appearance. But I’d argue that Macdonald succeeds in
making the Chorus crucial to the tone and texture of the production, even if
the amount of hearty thyrsus-stomping that goes on becomes headache-inducing by
the end.
The
evening boasts arresting moments, and the performances of its leads are about
all that you could wish for. Signalling Pentheus’s recourse to rationality by having
him attired in a suit may be an over-obvious touch, but Carvel is skillful at
conveying the character’s arrogance and misogyny as he denies Dionysos’s status
as deity. It’s clear from the off that, unlike Pentheus, Whishaw’s Dionysos has
no difficulty whatsoever with duality: long-haired, dress-clad, he’s a waifish rock
star androgyne. It’s a role that the mercurial Whishaw seems born to play and
he inhabits it with absolute intelligence, feeling and unpredictability here.
Nothing feels forced, everything is fresh: the performance has both intensity
and absolute casualness. Still, if the evening gains much of its interest from
the actor’s uncanny presence it’s actually left to Carvel to best incarnate
Dionysian frenzy with a memorably mad matronly exit as Pentheus prepares to spy
on Dionysos’ female followers and an even more startling re-appearance as Agave.
“Darkness is serious,” Dionysos reminds us. At its finest, MacDonald’s
production illuminates this play’s darkness intelligently and hauntingly.
The production is booking until 19th September.
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