Rule no. 1 - Gods are powerful and shouldn't be messed with.
Rule no. 2 - We strain against universal convictions at our peril.
Rule no. 3 - Resistance is futile.
Here are a few random observations based on notes I scrawled on the back of my ticket during the performance. Might be fun if you two add your own ideas after you've watched it.
First off, the set is excellent. It creates a very "rock star" space for Dionysus (I wonder if anyone will ever set the play to punk music? That would definitely tap into the Dionysian potential), and the set division provided an elegant area for exposition.
Throughout the play, an interesting mix of dynamic process and stasis. The staging disturbingly avoids a strict, pictorial focus. Your eye is never automatically guided to human figures (except maybe Dionysus) at the expense of magnified detail. It's Seurat on stage (without the hats and cute little dogs) - you're coerced into following the drama but there's an uncomfortable pressure. We are definitely in a Spenserian bower situation.
The most interesting thing about the production is the way it maintains a very precise ambivalence, so strong and deep that it threads a knife-edge without falling off on either side (or both sides at the same time) between some kind of Apollonian, Gaga-like decadence and the actual Bacchanalia.
A very beautiful way they represented this was when Pentheus (Philip as psycho-sexually repressed, cross-dressing ruler of Thebes) dons the debris of his palace banner as a party frock-cum-shroud.
Pia's Agave was excellent, especially as a little girl lost tugging at her father's knee for comfort that never comes, when the awful truth that she's murdered her son finally dawns on her. And it was nice having the messengers as chorus members (the messengers are our only real window into the Dionysian rites, and having the chorus women play men, recounting scenes of female abandon, somehow makes perfect sense).
Dionysus (god of the scream!) was played very much as a pop star celebrity. The act wasn't very spontaneous though, and as a decision I'm not sure how that worked (again with the Apollonian abstraction vs Dionysian release thing) - it's like he's been immaculately assembled by an entourage of invisible stylists rather than gushing forth fully formed, a spirit of natural necessity.
The fact he's wearing heels too (as a symbol of exertion, twisting the foot into unnatural beauty) removes him from the directly Dionysian, the all-natural abandon. It's one of the things which maybe tipped the balance a little (on that precarious walk across the knife-edge), where "the Scream" becomes a bit of a simper.
So, not to sound like a Paglia groupie or anything (who am I kidding?), but I was definitely reminded of what she said re Gaga as a "calculated and clinical" creature, who is iconic for being a symbol of liberation while in fact presenting herself as anything but.
But maybe this is the modern Dionysus - a digitized deity who accepts his artificiality, who strips himself of revolutionary potential, whose eroticism is entirely conceptual.
The Apollonian fixation in the ritualised solitude of the stark space, the idealised makeup, the coordinating spears, the songs - however, when the Chorus fractures and starts moving and speaking on their own terms you suddenly do see Dionysus. It stops being a show and the audience isn't thinking any more, just experiencing and, more importantly, feeling.
Rule no. 2 - We strain against universal convictions at our peril.
Rule no. 3 - Resistance is futile.
Here are a few random observations based on notes I scrawled on the back of my ticket during the performance. Might be fun if you two add your own ideas after you've watched it.
First off, the set is excellent. It creates a very "rock star" space for Dionysus (I wonder if anyone will ever set the play to punk music? That would definitely tap into the Dionysian potential), and the set division provided an elegant area for exposition.
Throughout the play, an interesting mix of dynamic process and stasis. The staging disturbingly avoids a strict, pictorial focus. Your eye is never automatically guided to human figures (except maybe Dionysus) at the expense of magnified detail. It's Seurat on stage (without the hats and cute little dogs) - you're coerced into following the drama but there's an uncomfortable pressure. We are definitely in a Spenserian bower situation.
The most interesting thing about the production is the way it maintains a very precise ambivalence, so strong and deep that it threads a knife-edge without falling off on either side (or both sides at the same time) between some kind of Apollonian, Gaga-like decadence and the actual Bacchanalia.
A very beautiful way they represented this was when Pentheus (Philip as psycho-sexually repressed, cross-dressing ruler of Thebes) dons the debris of his palace banner as a party frock-cum-shroud.
Pia's Agave was excellent, especially as a little girl lost tugging at her father's knee for comfort that never comes, when the awful truth that she's murdered her son finally dawns on her. And it was nice having the messengers as chorus members (the messengers are our only real window into the Dionysian rites, and having the chorus women play men, recounting scenes of female abandon, somehow makes perfect sense).
Dionysus (god of the scream!) was played very much as a pop star celebrity. The act wasn't very spontaneous though, and as a decision I'm not sure how that worked (again with the Apollonian abstraction vs Dionysian release thing) - it's like he's been immaculately assembled by an entourage of invisible stylists rather than gushing forth fully formed, a spirit of natural necessity.
The fact he's wearing heels too (as a symbol of exertion, twisting the foot into unnatural beauty) removes him from the directly Dionysian, the all-natural abandon. It's one of the things which maybe tipped the balance a little (on that precarious walk across the knife-edge), where "the Scream" becomes a bit of a simper.
So, not to sound like a Paglia groupie or anything (who am I kidding?), but I was definitely reminded of what she said re Gaga as a "calculated and clinical" creature, who is iconic for being a symbol of liberation while in fact presenting herself as anything but.
But maybe this is the modern Dionysus - a digitized deity who accepts his artificiality, who strips himself of revolutionary potential, whose eroticism is entirely conceptual.
The Apollonian fixation in the ritualised solitude of the stark space, the idealised makeup, the coordinating spears, the songs - however, when the Chorus fractures and starts moving and speaking on their own terms you suddenly do see Dionysus. It stops being a show and the audience isn't thinking any more, just experiencing and, more importantly, feeling.
Who wrote it?
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