Performances in the 2000s

The 2007 play, Sophocles' Trachiniae, was a multimedia production which aimed to be comprehensible to audiences with all levels of Greek ranging from none to advanced. Surtitles were omitted to put an emphasis on the performance itself, but the play began with a brief preface in English, outlining the events that were to take place. In addition, at a few significant points in the course of the play, passages from English literature were substituted for the Greek to show how the themes of the ancient tragedy still resonate with those of modern literature. The costumes were timeless, and the setting and staging of the play highlighted the intimacy, even domesticity, of much of the tragedy.

Each year, usually prior to the Thursday evening performance an eminent academic gives a talk related to the play being performed. The lecture is open to the public. The talk normally begins at 6.30 pm. In 2007, Professor Judith Mossman of Nottingham University gave a talk entitled "The Good Women of Trachis".

Sophocles’ Trachiniae is rarely performed and does not appear on syllabuses very often. This is a pity because it is a play with a lot of potential, with excellent opportunities for female actors. However, from a performance point of view that is also its big drawback: the main part of Deianeira, wronged wife of Herakles is enormous and the other parts are very small.

The 2007 King’s Greek Play team tackled the production with verve and inspiration. The set was a clean clinical white, with curtains hanging like columns in a temple, from which a portrait of the omni-absent Herakles made his mark and the chorus gracefully moved. Very good use was made of film to illustrate the yearning of Deianeira for her Herakles, bringing her words to life.

Recent King’s productions have used surtitles and I can’t have been the only audience member to panic when I saw that there were none this year. But the surtitles were successfully superseded by summaries in English by the actors. The programme notes also helpfully highlighted Greek words to look out for, though it might have been helpful to add English derivations, were appropriate, eg for the often recurring ‘gynaikes’.

The acting was as ever of a very high standard. Charlotte Murrie in particular showed flair and resilience, not least in learning the huge role, but also in her singing and sensitive acting. The chorus also, the eponymous women of Trachis, were very well rehearsed and sang and spoke their lines with beautiful accents. They also looked terrific in their cosmetic masks and blind folds.

This was a high drama performance: Nessos’ long festering blood glowed pink on the darkened stage as Deianeira daubed it over robes for Herakles. The theatre rang with echoes of crackling funeral fires as the play climaxed in a crescendo of murder and suicide.

The students of King’s College London are to be congratulated on yet another imaginative and dynamic production in the original Greek.

The first Greek tragedy I ever saw in the original language was Sophocles' Trachiniae (Women of Trachis), in Cambridge in 1983. I still remember it vividly. Now the relatively rarely-staged (compared to the Oedipus Rex and Antigone) Trachiniae becomes the first play I've seen two Greek-language productions of (without, incidentally, seeing an English version in the interim).

I've noticed over the years that the King's Greek Play has a tendency to be theatrically experimental. Even when the staging is fairly conventional, they'll choose a left-field text like Rhesus. 2007 is no different, and director Caroline Fries scatters throughout the play what I can only describe as artifices, seeking to engage the Greekless audience. Perhaps that's appropriate, as Trachiniae sees Sophocles himself experimenting, with a female character, Deianeira, Heracles' wife, who is, as Judith Mossman noted in her pre-performance talk, not bad in herself, but through naivety and a lack of common sense manages to kill her husband, a central conflict between two characters (Heracles and Deianeira) who never meet, and a Messenger whose initial action is to report an offstage messenger's speech.

The question is, do any of the artifices work?

Before tackling that, I have to be fair and point out that playing a role in a Greek-language production is difficult, especially if one is not a native speaker of the modern language (and there are noticeably fewer people in prominent roles with that sort of background than there have been in previous years). Not only does one have to remember lines in a tongue not one's own, but one has to appear as if one knows what the lines mean. I have seen Greek language productions where actors were speaking words when they clearly had no idea of the meaning, and had just learned the text by rote. No-one in this year's King's Greek Play committed that sin. And these are amateur actors and an amateur production. So I cannot set too harsh a standard upon such a show (which is not to say that student productions cannot sometimes reach very high standards indeed).

So, what are some of the artifices? The production makes a point of eschewing surtitles. I think this is a shame, as I was glad to see them appear in 2005. Instead, there are short readings in English. These are usually given at microphones by the sides of the stage, though the dying Heracles remains on his cot. They are translations of lines of the play, summaries of the action, or texts that resonate with the same themes (I recognized Shakespeare and the King James Bible). There are also short filmed sequences projected on to the backdrop (as there had been in a previous KCL version of the Antigone that I saw, and didn't much like). I'm not sure that this helps the audience follow the play's action - I found myself wondering how someone unfamiliar with the work would cope. The film sequences also occasion the odd pause as the cast wait for them to start, which cause the action to drag. (As does the bringing on of Heracles, where the lights are dimmed as his cot is pulled on by stagehands, who then left before the action resumed - far better, surely, to begin the scene as Heracles is brought on.) All this can only be accommodated through what seemed to be the slashing of significant sections of the Greek - this at least is what I surmised from the way those around me following the work with their Oxford Classical Texts flipped their pages over.

The Chorus are clad in Greek-style dresses, and masked, after a fashion - their faces are painted white, with a black domino mask painted across that. The intent here may be to present the Chorus as uniform, but in fact the make up actually highlights the differences in their faces. But there is some attempt at music (though little movement), with the Chorus singing two songs, and a duet with Deianeira.

Deianeira is portrayed confidently by Charlotte Murrie, and it soon becomes clear that her halting delivery is intended to show Deianeira's state of mind, and not because she has forgotten her lines. (Unfortunately, the play began with an English prologue by an actress who had forgotten her lines.) She is clad in a forties cocktail dress, with a large flower in her hair, an echo, as the programme notes reveal, of Billie Holiday's look. Heracles' new bride, Iole, is clad identically, underlining the way in which she is intended as a replacement for Deianeira. It also adds incestuous overtones to Heracles demand that Iole be married after his death to his son Hyllus - like Oedipus, Hyllus is to plough the furrow previously ploughed by his father.

I can't say that there were any particularly bad ideas used in this production. But the artifices seemed to me not to add up to more than the sum of their parts. There was no unifying theme bringing the various devices together - for all that last year's production seems to have somewhat divided people I've spoken to, there was at least a single central idea from which the other ideas flowed. I couldn't see that in this production.

So this version of Trachiniae seems to me to be a failed experiment. But it is a failure produced by people who have talent. To progress one must experiment, and if that exposes one to the risk of failure, that does not invalidate the experiment, for that is how one learns.

This review was first posted on Dr. Keen's blog

Sophocles' Trachiniae is concerned with the house of Herakles, husband of Deianeira, and father of Hyllus. Herakles is absent on one of his labours, as he has been so often in the past. Deianeira is concerned at his absence, as she has heard tell of a prophecy concerning her husband's fate, which stated that if he did not return within fifteen months, his life would come to its end. In her anxiety, she beseeches her son to find his father and return with news of his well-being. Before Hyllus returns, a messenger brings the welcome news that Herakles is indeed alive and well and headed home, much to the jubilation of his long-suffering wife.

Not long after the celebrations are begun, however, Herakles' attendant Lichas returns with a number of female slaves. He lies about their origins, claiming they are the spoils of war from the sacked city of Oichalia, including a beautiful, well-born young woman, Iole, to whom Deianeira immediately finds herself drawn. However, the messenger informs Deianeira that Iole is, in fact, a princess and the sole reason Herakles sacked Oichalia - he intends to have her for his wife.

At this news, she becomes increasingly distraught. While she tries to be resigned to the situation, Deianeira vows to have her husband returned to her by virtue of a love potion, given to her by the Centaur Nessus, years earlier as he lay dying from the fatal shot administered to him by Herakles, the punishment for touching Deianeira with lustful hands. She smears this potion on a ceremonial robe, which she sends to her husband as he makes a sacrifice at a temple outside the town. Little does Deianeira know that the potion is actually a poison, which the twisted Centaur hoped she would one day use to unwittingly kill Herakles - this wish is fulfilled; Hyllus returns, blinded by anger, declaring his mother a murderer and announcing that Herakles is approaching, in the throws of death. Upon understanding her tragic error, Deianeira takes her own life.

Herakles finally reaches his home town, denouncing his former wife. He orders the protesting Hyllus to be married to Iole, and to burn his body on a funeral pyre. Thus the life of the great hero is ended, though the play ends without depicting his death.