A 'Bacchae' to wake you

Warm milk and soft music? Forget about it. We all know that, if you want to fall asleep quickly, classical literature is the way to go. It's a familar scene--we sit down with our book, planning to get our English reading out of the way, and then suddenly wake up, three hours later, face pressed into the binding with a small river of drool trickling off the edge of the table. While there are few in the Yale community who have managed to escape the soporific effects of Greek tragedy, the current production of Euripedes' The Bacchae manages to breathe new life into a genre that has been boring students to death for years.

Directed by Stephen Aleman, PC '98, the production attempts to stay as true as possible to the ancient Greek concepts of performance. Instead of merely adhering to the basic rules of Greek tragedy such as offstage action and no scene changes, Aleman goes even further and offers the audience a production complete with chanting, drumming and a musical chorus. The five-woman chorus makes an entertaining and sensationalistic addition to the show, and musical director Jeremiah Baumann, TC '98, creates an appropriately dramatic soundtrack. Using an unabridged translation of the text, the play tells the story of Pentheus (Ben Gregory, MC '99), King of Thebes, refusing to acknowledge the divinity of Dionysus, the god of wine and theatre. Pentheus is eventually punished in a most unpleasant way by Dionysus himself , played by the entertaining Jon Kotchian, BK '98.

Colorful, energetic, and inspired, the production realizes the lurid debauchery one would expect from the followers of Dionysus. While the actual text is sometimes overshadowed by the actors' over-the-top delivery, Euripedes' stock characters often benefit from such melodrama (this is Greek tragedy, after all). The actors are clearly enjoying themselves and are putting as much of themselves into the play--both physically and emotionally--as they can. The result is a wild, entertaining orgy of a performance in which, by the final scene, the stage is scattered with chunks of costumes, props, and splatters of fake blood.

Teetering on the line between classical theater and high camp, The Bacchae proves that a play that is dull to read can be fun to watch. The play, after all, focuses almost entirely on sex, violence and drunk-enness--how could it not entertain? It's time to put away those painful memories of nights spent sleeping through Greek tragedies, and let one keep you awake for a change.

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