Wole Soyinka, Africa's first winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, is a world-renowned poet and playwright. His version of the classic tragedy includes elements drawn from Christianity and the Yoruba cult of Ogun from West Africa, while still remaining faithful to Euripides' original play. The Shock Tactics production does full justice to the sensual power of this hypnotic spectacle, providing a truly Dionysiac experience for cast and audience alike. Taste the ecstasy... that's no exaggeration!
with
Rory Thompson as Dionysus
David Clifford as Pentheus
Brian Melican as Tiresias
James Barbour as Kadmos
Laura Kerr as Agave
Andrew Simpson as the Herdsman
Ben Gardner as the Officer
Daniel Ward as Slave Leader
Katy McDonnell as First Bacchante
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In many ways the latest offering from Shock Tactics
could be viewed as a natural progression in a line
of productions distinguished by an anomalous edge;
this quality resembling a cocktail of the
unconventional, the visually striking and the
emotionally engaging. All of these elements have
been present in varying proportions since the
Tactics unleashed themselves way back in the heady
days of ’97. The one base element to have
been a common denominator in all the group’s
offerings thus far has been raw energy. The first
thing that the audience is made aware of with these
productions is that everybody is totally, one
hundred percent into what they are doing and this
is what sets the Tactics head and shoulders above
other amateur groups and lends them more than a
touch of professionalism.
Soyinka’s Bacchae can be seen as a
progression because it successfully drew on the
strengths of its predecessors to produce a highly
satisfying and concise package. Distilled into the
melting pot we find the combination of unpalatable
gore and beautiful poetic language, reminiscent of
director Jeff Shaw’s 1997 masterpiece
’Tis Pity She’s A Whore and
Macbeth from 2000. The director’s
penchant for combining the emotionally harrowing
with unrelenting style and grace can be traced back
to 1998’s sprawling epic Ghetto,
while the more light-hearted moments of The
Bacchae owe a debt to 2001’s quirky and
endearing rendering of The Nativity.
Beneath all these productions however there has
been an underlying pathos, some more obvious than
others and some more openly menacing in their
subtext. In this case we find classic Euripidean
tragedy filtered through two minds – one of
these is the Nobel Prize winning author, the other
the ever uncompromisingly original director. In an
otherwise casual conversation regarding the
dynamics of ’Tis Pity and its effect
on the audience, Jeff once remarked, ‘I want
to blow their minds’. Everyone in the room
knew he was deadly serious and his reputation for
‘thinking big’ has always been
vindicated by the breathtaking results that are the
productions themselves.
The cathartic effects of tragedy were compounded in
this case by the Tactics’ characteristic
embracing of taboo subjects and the subsequent
exposition of them. In the past we’ve been
bombarded with the dark side of human nature in the
form of incest, mass murder, genocide, hedonism,
vengeance, perversion, injustice, impiety and
ultra, ultra violence. This time there’s
plenty to chew on. For a start, anything involving
Dionysus is tantamount to orgiastic frenzy,
‘pleasure without measure’ and whatever
other degenerate threats to social order one can
think of. Pentheus is aware of what he refers to as
‘…the rot and creeping/ Poison in the
body of state’, but all it takes is a few
goblets of Bacchic nectar before his curiosity as
to the clandestine activities of the
self-segregated Bacchae in the hills gets the
better of him. Themes of voyeurism run through the
text and Pentheus pays the ultimate price for his.
Cult possession, grisly inter-familial murder and
sexual ambiguity are also there, to spice up
proceedings, not to mention the play’s lurid,
unsettling climax, which is enough to turn
anyone’s stomach. Drinking wine out of your
son’s freshly decapitated head is surely an
experience that no one of sound body and mind would
ever wish to partake in.
Tackling a text like Soyinka’s, which is so
potent, internally wrought and richly poetic
demands acting of the highest order and
sensitivity. Shock Tactics deliver on both counts.
Rory Thompson’s Dionysus was a carefully
calculated and meticulously handled performance,
which offset beautifully against David
Clifford’s ranting, unstable, hubristic and
always convincing Pentheus. Daniel Ward’s
mesmerising intonations as the Slave Leader did
real justice to Soyinka’s poetry. The quieter
tones of Tiresias were rendered with aplomb by
Brian Melican, whose slapstick scene with Kadmos
proved to be well timed and hugely entertaining, as
too was Ben Garder’s cockney Officer. The
Bacchae themselves were suitably lascivious and
clearly relished their playful interaction with the
confused and downtrodden Slaves. Andrew Simpson
must be complemented for his ability to remember
and relate the play’s longest speech as the
talkative Herdsman. James Barbour’s Kadmos
was extremely powerful and thoroughly watchable,
while Laura Kerr’s Agave was wonderfully
played with precisely the right level of sassy
psychosis/possessed dementia in the final scene,
which was, fittingly, the strongest of the play.
This play was ultimately a group effort of megaton
strength with truly explosive results.
Congratulations to everyone involved and remember
– if you take a moral high ground against
Dionysus, he gonna mess you up real good, baby.
Michael Pegler
A well known tragedy is given a refreshing
post-colonial subtext in this rewrite of the
"Bacchae". Dionysos, the spurned bastard son of god
Zeus and mortal Semele, returns to Thebes, bringing
wine and pagan liberty to the doorstep of his
authoritarian cousin Pentheus. It seems to many in
the city - to the slave population in particular -
that liberation is at hand. But is Dionysos really
the bringer of benevolent anarchy, or malevolent
and undiscriminating vengeance?
Dionysos (Rory Thompson) provides an appropriately
icy, haughty and controlled performance, and his
disdain for increasingly unhinged Pentheus (David
Clifford) produces some of the most dramatically
impressive moments of the play. In fact, most of
the confrontational scenes are handled well, and
particular praise goes to the vituperative exchange
between Pentheus and Tiresias (Brian Melican), the
old prophet of Thebes. Tiresias and Kadmos (James
Barbour) provide a welcome - if occasionally
overdone - dose of slapstick, in the spirit of
Shakespeare's porter, and this versatility works
well to heighten the drama of the main scenes.
Finally, Agave (Laura Kerr) is marvellously
convincing as the mother coming out of a
bacchanalian frenzy to discover that she has torn
her own son limb from limb, and the closing scene
packs a laudably heavy emotional punch.
Soyinka provides a difficult script to play, and
some monologues perhaps inevitably drag a little. A
notable exception, though, is the messianic
performance of Daniel Ward as the Slave Leader,
whose wide-eyed recitations are captivating.
The
use of rhythm, smoke and incense heightens the
sensation of ritual and other-worldliness in these
well wrought scenes. And despite some flaws and
stutters (the over-ambitious and scarcely necessary
wedding scene being the most obvious example), the
all-important sensation of true tragedy - the
inevitability of events unfolding under the eyes of
the gods, and the consequent powerlessness of the
pathetic mortals scurrying around on the earth - is
well maintained. Altogether, Shock Tactics provide
an ambitious and largely successful production of a
challenging play.
Chris
Hooley