Bacchai

Euripides, Colin Teevan

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781840022612
• eBook ISBN: 9781849436144
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

Dionysos, the God of wine and theatre has returned to his native land to take revenge on the puritanical Pentheus who refuses to recognise him of his rites. Remorselessly, savagely and with black humour, the God drives Pentheus and all the city to their shocking fate. This version was specially commissioned by the National Theatre for a production in May 2002, directed by Sir Peter Hall and scored by Sir Harrison Birtwhistle.

Characters

DIONYSUS

CHORUS
of Asian Women

TEIRESIAS

CADMUS

PENTHEUS

GUARD

HERDSMAN

SERVANT

AGAVE

SOLDIERS

This translation of Bacchai was first performed at the National Theatre (Olivier) on 8 May 2002, with the following cast:

DIONYSUS/TEIRESIAS/SERVANT, Greg Hicks

CADMUS/SOLDIER/HERDSMAN, David Ryall

PENTHEUS/AGAVE, William Houston

CHORUS, Nicola Alexis, Ewen Cummins, Lee Haven-Jones, Chuk Iwuji, Rebecca Lenkiewicz, Wendy Morgan, Richard Morris, Renzo Murrone, Stefani Pleasance, Margaret Preece, Marie-Gabrielle Rotie, Rachel Sanders, Geoffrey Streatfeild, Clare Swinburne, Jax Williams

Director, Peter Hall

Designer, Alison Chitty

Composer, Harrison Birtwistle

Lighting Designer, Peter Mumford

Movement Director, Marie-Gabrielle Rotie

Sound Designer, Paul Groothuis

Assistant Director, Cordelia Monsey

Company Voice Work, Patsy Rodenburg

Mask Maker, Vicki Hallam

Musical Directors/Musicians, Nikola Kodjabashia, Kawai Shiu

Musicians, Martin Allen, Rufus Duits, Alan Hacker, Belinda Sykes

A bare stage.

DIONYSUS

An empty space and all of you, and me.

And who am I? Dionysus son of Zeus;

God of the vine, god of dramatic rites,

God of the transformation from the humdrum

To the wild abandon of the play.

So let us play, so let us beat the drum,

I have returned to the city of my birth;

To the banks of this broad river,

To where the city ends and the wild begins,

A place poised between two worlds,

To where Semele, the daughter of the old king Cadmus,

My mother, bore me through the lightning fire.

I have come home and taken human form

So my true nature be made manifest,

So that I might suspend the disbelief

Of all who dare not believe in me.

Let’s play, I said. Look and you’ll begin to see.

My mother’s tomb, standing where she was struck down.

See how it smoulders still from the thunderbolt of Zeus;

Hurled by his wife Hera in bittersweet revenge

For all these love affairs with mortal girls.

See too how old Cadmus preserves as sacrosanct

The place where his daughter, my mother, died.

And look! my contribution; luscious vines.

You see? You begin to hear the drumbeat?

The drumbeat I first fashioned in the East,

In the depths of darkest Asia.

He dances.

I left the gold rich lands of Lydia

And Phrygia, for Persia’s upland plains,

Then on to towered Bactria I danced.

The lands of the Medes held no fear for me

As I described an incandescent arc

Across the deserts of Arabia.

The East soon came to know my mysteries,

Half the known world now dances to my drum.

As for the other half, as for you…

He stops dancing.

This city here shall be the first

Of all the western world to cry my cry,

And dress themselves in dappled skins of deer,

And raise the ivy-covered club, my sacred shaft.

And why? Because the three sisters of my mother,

Ino, Autonoe and Agave,

Have dared declare that I, Dionysus,

Was not fathered by my father Zeus,

But say that my own mother Semele

Was seduced by some mere mortal.

What’s more, these aunts of mine...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half-title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Characters