Transcript Document

School of Classics
something
FACULTY OF ARTS
OTHER
Putting on the Greeks:
Greek tragedy in Leeds
Eleanor OKell
Visiting
Research
Fellow
Classics in Our Lunchtimes
www.classicstalks.wordpress.org/museum
[email protected]
School of Classics
FACULTY OF ARTS
Why is there so much Greek tragedy, especially
premieres of New Greek tragedies, in Leeds?
What is the attraction of Greek tragedy?
For playwrights
For directors and theatre companies
For theatres
For audiences
School of Classics
FACULTY OF ARTS
The Bacchae, Kneehigh, West Yorkshire Playhouse (2004)
The truly great theatre companies stand out by their ability to be
distinctively themselves and yet make a succession of shows that
are distinctively different. After an astonishing few years of creative
frenzy, Kneehigh joins those ranks with its latest piece, which takes
Euripides' wild tragedy of reason and madness and reinvents it as
a contemporary postmodern folk tale.
It sings so clearly to us not just because it addresses the hysteria
of mob violence and cycles of revenge that are so much part of our
times, but because it whispers directly to the heart and the dark
desire to kick off our comfy slippers and join the wild, whirling
dance of abandon and sod the consequences.
The Guardian
Photo © Keith Pattison
School of Classics
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Ajax (2006)
stage@leeds
School of Classics
FACULTY OF ARTS
Orestes (University of Leeds, March 2011)
Hippolytus (University of Leeds, December 2008,
Paphos Ancient Odeon – Cyprus, July 2010)
The Wife of Heracles (University of Leeds, May
2010)
Helen of Troy (University of Leeds, December 2007)
Dr George
Rodosthenous
Ajax (University of Leeds, November 2006 / Tour of
Cyprus, July 2007)
Alcestis (University of Leeds, November 2004)
Agamemnon (Raven Theatre – Leeds, February
2001)
Alex Clark
http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/alex-clark/38/769/abb
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FACULTY OF ARTS
Alcestis
(2004)
School of Classics
FACULTY OF ARTS
Helen of Troy (2007)
School of Classics
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Hippolytus
(2008)
School of Classics
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The Wife of
Heracles
(2010)
School of Classics
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Orestes
(2011)
School of Classics
FACULTY OF ARTS
Opera: Cherubini's Medea; Grand Theatre, Leeds
Nick Kimberley Thursday 18 April 1996
It's a story from your daily paper: marriage crumbles,
husband abducts children, distraught wife resolves to get
them back by any means necessary. For all its classical
trappings, Cherubini's Medea is heart-stoppingly veristic.
…
Kandis Cook's costumes place the action in the court of
some 18th-century nobleman, rendered a touch exotic by
the vaguely Eastern headgear worn by Norman Bailey's
Creon and Thomas Randle's Jason.
School of Classics
FACULTY OF ARTS
1980/81
Stravinsky Oedipus Rex
1986/87
Stravinsky Oedipus Rex / Pulcinella (Ballet Rambert)
Berlioz Part 1 of The Trojans: The Capture of Troy
1987/88
Berlioz Part 2 of The Trojans: The Trojans at Carthage
1990/91
Tippett King Priam
1995/96
Cherubini Medea
1996/97
Gluck Iphigenia in Aulis
Montiverdi The Return of Ulysses
2004/05
Gluck Orfeo ed Euridice(co-production with Emio Greco I
PC Dance Company - opened at Edinburgh International
Festival)
2006/07
2007/08
2008/09
Monteverdi Orfeo
Keiser The Fortunes of King Croesus (British Premiere)
Strauss Electra (concert perf. at Leeds Town Hall)
School of Classics
FACULTY OF ARTS
School of Classics
FACULTY OF ARTS
Ted Hughes’ Alcestis, 2000
“I wrote to Ted Hughes once to congratulate
him on one of his works, and he wrote back
saying his tuning fork had always been in the
Calder Valley. After that, we kept
corresponding until his death.”
Barrie Rutter
“…especially poignant and
courageous…Alcestis is a work that looks
death in the eye without blinking. The
production leaves no doubt that Alcestis is
a major work.”
Charles Spencer The Daily Telegraph
School of Classics
FACULTY OF ARTS
Born: 17 August 1930 at 1, Aspinall
Street, Mytholmroyd, West Yorkshire
The House of Aries (radio play), 1960
Seneca's Oedipus, 1968
Orpheus, 1973
Racine's Phedre, 1997
Aeschylus’ Oresteia trilogy, 1999
(published posthumously)
School of Classics
FACULTY OF ARTS
Oedipus a new version by Blake Morrison
“The confrontations are like hammer blows,
catastrophe is inevitable but the narrative is
kept taut with tension…This is classic drama
for everyone”
The Stage (Kevin Berry)
“Refreshingly bold – I’ve seen many revivals of
Greek plays that tried to shed the classical
hauteur…but never one that so bluntly
deglamorised an ancient tragedy and relocated
it to our era. And somehow it works.”
The Times (Benedict Nightingale)
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“Morrison’s swift and unemphatically poetic
version of Sophocles is a perfect example of
levity in seriousness, exuberance in tragedy.
The tale unfolds with a literally blinding clarity.
Broadsides are touring- Catch them if you
can.” Daily Mail (Michael Coveney)
“This flexible, creative treatment of a classic of
the Western repertoire takes several risks but
fully justifies them, because nothing is allowed
to obscure the great strength of the original
play it’s inexorable rhythm, its intellectual
clout and its aural beauty.”
Times Literary Supplement (Edith Hall)
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Antigone (Northern
Broadsides, 2003 )
Oedipus (Northern
Broadsides, 2001)
The Cracked Pot
(NorthernBroadsides,
1995)
School of Classics
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Antigone A new version By Blake Morrison
A war has ended. Peace. Celebration – and
problems.
Antigone, hot-headed, wilful, stubborn daughter of
Oedipus, must defy the new ruler, Creon, to bury
her brother – traitorous leader of the failed
rebellion. Caught in the act, she is condemned
and brings death upon herself out of loyalty to her
dead brother.
The individual versus the state, conscience versus
the law, divine law versus human – Antigone is
undoubtedly Sophocles’ masterpiece.
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“Overwhelming…..It’s classical tragedy that
speaks our language.”
The Guardian
“From the moment the lights go up on the
Chorus we know that we will be completely
caught up in the drama. Immediately
accessible…this is not one of those plays
where you need to get clued up on the story
before you go to the theatre.”
BBC online
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FACULTY OF ARTS
Northern Broadsides’ Medea by
Paulin
The Telegraph commented:
Barrie Rutter has cast a striking, surefooted young black actress, Nina
Kristofferson, as the displaced enchantress
whose loving devotions have curdled into
vengeful hate. In an alluring greeny-blue
silky dress, hair cascading down her back,
Kristofferson convinces as a wounded
tigress – caged by sexist circumstance in
Corinth – who suddenly scents victory and
the means to have horrific sport with those
who have goaded her.
School of Classics
FACULTY OF ARTS
Medea, Alistair Elliot, West Yorkshire
Playhouse 2003
Vulnerable outcaste, jilted lover and
scheming sorceress. Without Medea's
help, Jason would never have acquired
the Golden Fleece, never have arrived
safely back to claim his kingdom, never
have had the success that followed,
never have had his two beautiful sons.
Such devotion surely deserves
repayment.
School of Classics
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Whatsonstage.com 25 November 2003
In a lifetime of theatregoing you will not often - indeed you may never encounter an eccyclema. In the last two months Yorkshire has seen
three. In the Northern Broadsides Antigone we had two, masquerading
as superannuated hospital trolleys, and now, in Euripides's Medea at the
West Yorkshire Playhouse, we get the third, as the wall of Medea's
apartment is collapsed to reveal the dead bodies of her two small sons
upon their bier. The eccyclema is a stage device in classical Greek
tragedy for revealing the corpses to an audience which has been denied
the actual spectacle of the dirty deed - it being axiomatic that Greek
theatre displays not action but the before and after thereof. Mention of it
here is not trivial, since Alistair Elliot translation of the play, originally
made for Diana Rigg's performance at the Almeida in 1992, is here seen
in a production which was fanfared in advance as marrying Greek
theatre with the traditions of the Yoruba tribe of Western Nigeria.
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Femi Elufowoju Jr (who also directs) contributes a bare-topped
Jason who certainly looks more African than Greek but whose
specious self-justification owes everything to Greek philosophical
discourse. He is manifestly Medea's inferior both emotionally and
intellectually, and Elufowoju's performance is generously
restrained in acknowledgement of the fact.
Not quite the cross-fertilisation of theatrical traditions that we
expected, then, but a workmanlike production with a performance
of rare beauty at its core.
- Ian Watson
School of Classics
FACULTY OF ARTS
Simon Armitage was born 26 May 1963, in
Marsden, West Yorkshire.
Mister Heracles - a version of the Euripides
play The Madness of Heracles, commissioned
by West Yorkshire Playhouse (2001)
In an interview for Radio 4's Front Row, Simon
Armitage said, "It is very much about heroism
and I thought that was a strong contemporary
theme."
School of Classics
FACULTY OF ARTS
Euripides’ play may be very old, but it doesn't feel old hat,
even if the long speeches recounting off-stage atrocities
don't sit with modern theatrical sensibilities.
Lyn Gardner
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 18 November 2010 23.00 GMT
A reviewer on Martin Crimp’s Cruel and Tender (an
adaptation of Sophocles’ Women of Trachis):
“The issues of today with 2,500 years worth of cultural
punch.”
School of Classics
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FACULTY OF ARTS
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Thursday 26th April
Roger Brock
Renaissance Singers
and the classics:
Dido’s lament and other Latin poetry
Classics in Our Lunchtimes
www.classicstalks.wordpress.org/museum