Evocative corridors… Absent at Shoreditch Town Hall. Photograph: Jim Stephenson
To call dreamthinkspeak’s Absent ‘theatre’ may be something of a misnomer. Sure, there are actors – namely, the well-drilled hotel staff who greet you at the entrance and guide you to the performance space, somewhat sinisterly controlling its edges with their ever-present surveillance. We also have the cadaverous and fleeting presence of our ‘protagonist’ (based, we are told, on the fascinating Margaret Campbell, the Duchess of Argyll), of whom one catches a surreptitious glimpse through a ‘mirror’ in the first room one comes to.
But beyond that, it perhaps would be more fitting to label it an installation (the vaguest of generic categorisations feels fitting), comprising of film, models, sound and space. In essence it might rather be best described, at the risk of sounding pompous, as a series of questions which themselves are never made explicit, let alone answered.
One is left to wander the wonderfully evocative corridors of Shoreditch Town Hall, which play the part of the hotel – arguably the lead – currently in the midst of redevelopment by a sinister conglomerate, which we discover through scraps of newspaper left here and there. But is the transition from an age of glamour, albeit an extremely privileged one, to an age of faceless and tawdry profit mongering, a commentary on the Shoreditch just outside the hotel walls? And what are we to make of the juxtaposition of a Manet and pots of Dulux in a utility room?
The real life Duchess of Argyll was a socialite whose private life caused a sensation of Profumo-like proportions, when in 1963 photographs emerged of her naked, save a string of pearls, fellating a ‘headless’ man (rumoured to be Winston Churchill’s son-in-law). In 1978, the then debt-riddled Duchess moved into the Grosvenor House hotel, where she resided for more than ten years. But in the world of the play, this hotel is where she resides now and is even to reside in the future.
Time is one of the many of ambiguities in Absent – ambiguities which point to a tension between how essential yet unreliable the memory can be, and the ephemerality of life in which one can never quite grasp the substance. The effect, complemented wonderfully by the soundscapes (by Lapalux) is consistently discomfiting, but at the same time affecting. The final two rooms (one progresses in a linear way through the rooms of the production) are incredibly moving, and give a real aptness to the production’s title.
On that note, however, if forced to level a criticism, one might argue there is too much space, or rather too much absence. How much of Absent’s value be ascribed to the actual production itself, rather than the audience member’s own imagination? But, then, maybe that’s the point.
Absent is at Shoreditch Town Hall, 380 Old Street, EC1V 9LT until 25 October.
Octagon (L-R Asan N’Jie, Solomon Israel, Harry Jardine) Photograph: Anna Söderblom
It didn’t take long for Nadia Latif, director of Homegrown, the controversially-cancelled play about young converts to radical Islam, to get back in the directing saddle.
At the Arcola this month Latif has directed Octagon, a new play by US spoken word artist Kristiana Rae Colón.
Referencing a huge range of contemporary issues from the nature of creativity, feminism and sexuality to personal legacy, Octagon depicts a group of would-be slam poets on the road to the national finals at the titular nightclub.
What resonates so strongly in the piece is the fact that it is written by an insider. The lyrics of a seasoned poet lend the text an authenticity that cannot be manufactured.
And the extremely strong cast of eight is up to the challenge. Each poem is delivered with such urgency and relish that it sounds as if the performers had penned the words themselves.
Estella Daniels as the host of the knockout rounds commands the room with an ethereal grace, striking fear into those who dare to cross her whilst gently teasing the audience into whoops and claps when a rhyme deserves it.
As she states at the top of the show, the judges are looking for poetry that “shivers your timbers, halogens your heart and sizzles your spine”, and we are not disappointed.
At its explosive best, Crystal Condie as Jericho delivers ‘Malala writes to Miley Cyrus’ with danger and urgency.
To the Taliban gunmen she says: “I spat I am Malala like acid back in his face” reminding Miley that her “right to gyrate didn’t come free”.
Latif’s direction is clean and specific, echoing the sharp clarity of the text. In one of the final moments, the poets reflect on whether they will go ahead with the national slam final given all that has happened.
What emerges is a scene, written in verse, which feels so fresh and present that it might be entirely improvised. Like great verse writers before her, Colón’s rhymes please the ears, but it is her complex and thoughtful provocations which follow you home.
Just beneath the surface, there are densely riddled arguments around sexuality, race and religion that go fathoms deep, the intricacy of their phrasing inviting you to mouth the words whilst you chew over the ideas a little longer.
For all its verbal dexterity however, the play does lack structural rigour. The narrative thread on which the poetry hangs is weak and the scenes a hotch-potch of different forms from monologue to drama to more abstract scenes.
But for the authenticity of the live experience, Octagon certainly hits the mark.
Octagon is at Arcola Theatre, 24 Ashwin Street, E8 3DL until 17 October.
Curious relationship… Alison O’Donnell and Jack Tarlton in Brenda. Photograph: Nobby Clark
In E.V. Crowe’s new play, coming to The Yard following its debut at HighTide festival, security guard Robert drags his reluctant girlfriend Brenda (Alison O’ Donnell) to their local Community Action Group. He hopes that sharing their story might persuade their neighbours to help the down-on-their-luck couple out.
But while Robert, played by an ashen-faced Jack Tarlton, might be fretting over flats and the future, this isn’t what worries Brenda. She stares at the audience with a hunted look, her feet have left tar-like black prints across the floor and she can’t seem to say her own name. An explanation, of sorts, comes when she tells Robert matter-of-factly she is actually “not a person”.
Sparse dialogue and slow dramatic action mean the roles are challenging but with Caitlin Mcleod’s direction Tarlton and O’Donnell give a convincing portrayal of this curious relationship. Robert is in turn cajoling and gentle as he persuades Brenda into taking the mic – he sings Bowie’s ‘Starman’ to encourage her to loosen up, electrocutes himself repositioning fans to cool her down but then calls her “selfish” when she won’t do as he asks.
Later (the community group has still not arrived) there are fun moments tinged with pathos when Robert humours Brenda by “pretending to be upwardly mobile”. They mime getting a dog, calling it Colin, having friends over and burning the dinner. Brenda goes to put Colin outside and Robert catches eyes with the audience, as he slowly mimes washing up – will she return or is the game over? She does come back, but not for long.
Like Mersault, the existentialist hero of Albert Camus’ L’Etranger, Brenda seems detached from the commonplace. But the audience doesn’t see her reach any kind of affirmation under the glare of the community hall spotlight.
On paper the play says it explores what life would look like ‘free from the challenges of being a person’ – but rather than being liberated, for most of the play Brenda is just a non-person shackled to the banality of everyday human existence. And then she is through the fire exit and gone.
Perhaps Brenda finds her freedom, but we can’t know how that pans out, and a lack of context or backstory means we’re left as indifferent as she is to what becomes of her.
Brenda is at the The Yard, Unit 2a Queen’s Yard, White Post Lane, E9 5EN until 17 October
A fancy members’ club in Soho is a far cry from The Yard Theatre in Hackney Wick, so joining a select group for a preview of new E4 series Chewing Gum, adapted from a play first shown at the Yard, I felt a little out of my comfort zone.
“It’s like we’re royalty,” whispered someone, as we were led into a private cinema, free drinks in hand. That someone sounded not dissimilar to Micheala Coel, the series’ writer and star, who was due to answer questions afterwards.
Named one of the six best young playwrights in the UK by WhatsOnStage, Coel’s career began when she wrote and starred in a semi-autobiographical monologue called Chewing Gum Dreams that in 2013 became the Yard’s first play to be transferred to the National.
That play, about life on an East London estate, has been snapped up by E4 and has since morphed into a six-part coming-of-age comedy about a young woman who really should have come of age already.
“The play goes from extreme laughter to tears, but this is a comedy so I had to make a completely different show,” explains 26-year-old Coel.
In the play Coel’s character, Tracey Gordon, was a sharp-tongued 14-year-old living on an estate in Tower Hamlets with much charm and potential but few expectations. But the Tracey we meet in the series is now 24 and facing a different set of dilemmas.
Tracey’s religion is holding her back from gaining life experience; she lives in a strict Christian household with a sister whose idea of fun is to stay at home and play Ludo. Tracey seems to have missed out on the teenage kicks part of growing up – but is determined to make up for lost time.
A slightly embarrassed Coel describes the two episodes shown as “sex central”, an accurate enough description, though she later stresses that the show tackles the world of work, drugs, family life and relationships too.
As far as the sex goes though, there’s everything from a threesome to nose-licking, and a fair few other things besides. Tracey’s first port of call in her quest is to Google the word ‘sex’, but what she learns from the internet doesn’t stack up in the real world. “My face is not to be sat on,” her celibate boyfriend tells her brusquely, while her best friend Candice’s dating advice to “channel your inner slut”, proves similarly disastrous.
In a similar way to Lena Dunham’s Girls, sex is present as a fact of growing up rather than as something to titillate the viewer. In that programme, and in Chewing Gum too, the relationship between on screen characters and their real life equivalents isn’t exactly clear. Are Coel’s characters based on people she knows and, more pointedly, is Tracey based on her?
“I think everyone is made of a few people I know, including Tracey,” Coel tells journalists at the screening. “It could be if I was on a really long bus journey and somebody was on the phone that they’ve somehow been put into the mixing pot of every character.”
But when we speak later, Coel talks more about the parallels between herself and Tracey.
Chewing Gum is set on an estate in Tower Hamlets, similar to the one where Coel herself grew up.
The cast of Chewing Gum
“It was a strong mix of mainly immigrants,” she says of her upbringing. “Everyone was very poor and as much as our cultures clashed we were wonderfully united by economic circumstances.”
Then as a teenager, Coel, like Tracey, was “wrapped up in cotton wool”. Her mother, she says, was strict and wouldn’t always let her go out.
But instead of going down that well-trodden path of rebellion, Coel ended up devoting herself to the church. Becoming a devout Christian for her meant celibacy and “not talking to guys”, something many hormonal teenagers would never consider. Looking back on that time, Coel recognises that she “put growing up on pause” but on the plus side she sees a lot of positives for her development as an artist.
“I started performing pretty much when I became Christian. I had a big old Pentecostal conversion, was given a bible and I wrote a lot of poetry. I guess that kind of faith can make you do crazy things and that was pretty much the first crazy thing I did was I walked into a bar and I asked if I could read a poem.”
These days Coel is a writer who revels in lampooning religion and who is keen to talk about sex and promote ‘normal’ women’s body images on screen (apparently she wanted nudity in the show but it was vetoed). How did this outspoken writer emerge?
Coel describes her ‘second conversion’ after winning a scholarship to the Guildhall School for Music and Drama. Suddenly she found herself among a cohort of fellow performers who seemed happy without religion.
“I was learning from those people rather than trying to teach them anything. I’d been told all these things about ‘worldly’ people, then got to school and discovered they weren’t true. And also I didn’t really feel any need to tell people that they needed Jesus Christ because I didn’t think they did.”
Whilst her peers were doing their final year shows, Coel opted to go it alone and create her own piece, the 15-minute monologue that was the very first Chewing Gum Dreams. Then after graduating, Coel looked to put it on somewhere. She found the Yard Theatre in Hackney Wick, and applied to be part of their Theatre of Great Britain Festival.
“It was basically build your own set, do your own marketing and do your own producing,” Coel remembers. “So I went all around East London with flyers and Jay Miller who runs The Yard, he’s really amazing with scripts and was really helpful in the way I extended it. He really gave me strong bits of advice so I’m very thankful to him.”
After the rave reviews for Chewing Gum Dreams and a successful transfer to the Shed at the National Theatre, a series was commissioned. Coel had played a part in Top Boy, a very different Channel 4 series about East London estate life, but insists television was “never on my radar”. Clearly now that has changed, and Coel is currently shooting another E4 comedy drama, Aliens – from the producers of Misfits – in which she plays the lead character.
However, Coel certainly won’t turn her back on more stage work. “If the scripts are good then I’ll do the job and it doesn’t matter what kind of thing it is,” she says, sounding every inch like a drama school graduate.
Coel remembers the early days at the Yard, which may seem an age away but they were only three years ago. “I have extremely happy memories of performing there, as stressful as it was,” she says. “When you see people crying their eyes out or laughing and then looking like they’re satisfied. It’s the best, best, best feeling in the world.”
Members of the cast of Rockston Stories: An Addictive Cabaret. Photograph: Siva Zagel
A cabaret about crack cocaine addiction performed by a cast including recovering addicts is coming to Hoxton Hall this month.
Rockston Stories: An Addictive Cabaret is a play about a cabaret singer who becomes addicted to crack, using the testimonies and stories of people researched locally.
The play is set in ‘Rockston’, apparently a reference to Hoxton’s nickname among crack cocaine users.
Told through the singer’s perspective, the play travels through time and space back to when Hoxton Hall was a music hall and temperance society meeting house.
The cast are nearly all in different stages of recovery from addiction, and the play includes some of their live testimonies, as well as characters from Hoxton’s historical past and present.
The production is by Outside Edge Theatre, a theatre company that produces work about addiction. It aims to help people affected by chemical addiction to achieve their potential by building skills and confidence.
Rehearsals for Rockston Stories. Photograph: Siva Zagel
Outside Edge was founded in 1998 by Phil Fox, an actor and former addict who died last year.
The play is dedicated to his memory, and devising it has made his successor Susie Miller realise that death and grieving are things most addicts are familiar with.
“We also had another cast member who passed away in April,” says Miller. “His actual words are in the script within the play, his final lines that he shared in our rehearsal are actually spoken. Grief is an everyday emotion because it’s a common occurrence for people in recovery to pass away.”
In the play the main character, Thalia, reaches ‘rock bottom’ and is faced with a decision.
“In terms of recovery they call it the jumping off point,” says Miller. “It’s the point where you either make a decision to change and step into recovery or often people will die through suicide or accidental death.”
Aside from the serious business of addiction, but as a cabaret Rockston Stories aims to entertain too. There are musical numbers with singers and instrumentalists, performing a mixture of classic songs and others written by cast members.
The cast ranges from professionals who have been in West End shows such as Cats and Les Miserables to amateurs, and Miller says this shows how addiction reaches all spectrums of society.
“Some have been in recovery for over 20 years, some just a few months, and some are professionally trained actors and directors and others have very little performance experience. It makes it very lively and vibrant to work with them.”
There’s nothing more electric than live music and it feels there’s never been a better time to enjoy it in East London. A couple of weeks ago I sat in a cellar bar packed with people listening to nothing but the sweet sounds of a piano and a double bass picking out tunes like ‘Pitter Patter Panther’ and ‘Lady Be Good’ with just the chinking of glasses being picked up and put down on tables.
It was Basement Tapes night at Kansas Smitty’s, one of the area’s newest jazz hangouts, where each week one member of the self-titled house band invites other musicians in to play music to a ticket-only crowd. That week it was band member Joe Webb on piano and Conor Chaplin on double bass and both were excellent.
It’s ticket-only, presumably, because otherwise there’d be a scrum on the door. Open since May, the venue already has a loyal following of regular customers, with one saying he and his friends got there several hours early to make sure they got a spot.
The Kansas Smitty’s house band regularly play the likes of Ronnie Scott’s, the Vaults and the Vortex. They’re led by Giacomo Smith on clarinet, who hails from upstate New York. The bar is their permanent base in the city, with a film night on Tuesdays, jazz throughout the week and plans to put on more live events as autumn draws in.
The model of bringing in musicians from the wider jazz community to play there means there’s always fresh music coming through and creative collaboration really is at the heart of what they’re trying to promote with the venue.
“The clearest goal we had from the outset was that we had to one day have our own bar,” says Kansas Smitty’s manager Jack Abrahams. “We’ve always felt that there was this whole group of people we’d met along the way and were yet to meet who just needed a home to come together in – we are now in the what-happens-next phase.”
With the Jackdaw jazz café just opening in Clapton, is this something of a ‘golden era’ in terms of the jazz talent in in the city right now?
“Absolutely,” says Abrahams. “As London’s land value goes up the larger venues are proving unsustainable and closing down so lots of smaller ones spring up. So much so that the independent arts, music, drink and food scene in London is bordering on frenzied. Plenty of shows means plenty of musicians which means everyone’s bringing their A-game no matter how small the show.
One thing you’ll notice, is that it’s not a pretentious place. It feels more like a big living room, except with a kickass drinks menu and some of London’s brightest musical talent performing each week.
This wouldn’t be a bar review without mentioning the drinks and here it’s all about the juleps. There’s a beautiful ‘Scarborough Fair’ with bourbon, parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, toasted almond, salted heather honey and mint. The Allotment is also good, this time with gin, nettle, elderflower, carrot, coriander seed, apple, pear and mint.
All the alcohols are infused over night with herbs and flavours. Served in crushed ice out of a metal cup, the idea is that as the ice slowly melts different flavours are unlocked – so don’t knock them back to fast. With ingredients ranging from Tonka bean, nutmeg and pimento to cloves and chamomile there’s plenty to try, as well a fridge-full of cool beers and ales as the music heats up.
Great music, great atmosphere and exemplary juleps. Don’t miss out.
Kansas Smitty’s House Band will be playing at the bar on 23 September to celebrate the launch of their debut album.
An intriguing new play opening at the Yard this month has at its core the central question of what would life would look like “free from the everyday challenges of being a person.”
Brenda, which transfers this month from the HighTide Festival in Suffolk, was inspired by playwright E.V. Crowe’s instinctive feeling about the nature of the self.
“This feeling was so strong, I had to write about it,” Crowe says. “Once I had written a character who could say out loud ‘I’m not a person’ it felt like such a denial of everything we consider natural and true.”
From this radical starting point, the play has been developed alongside acclaimed director Caitlin McLeod through a process of experimentation. The play was built as the rehearsal process unfolded, with everyone in the room contributing to what the production will be.
“It’s a terrifying way to work in some respects,” Crowe admits. “But we think it will make the play more alive and real than other ways of working.”
Crowe honed her playwriting as a member of the Royal Court Young Writers Programme Super Group. Her classmates at the time reading like a who’s who of today’s hot young playwrights: Nick Payne, Anya Reiss, Penelope Skinner.
And although she had completed a MA in playwriting prior to her involvement at the Royal Court, she says it was her experience there that really showed her the possibility of becoming a playwright.
Brenda is clearly at home amongst the challenging and unorthodox work which has come to characterise The Yard theatre, and which has won it such a loyal following across London.
Previously Crowe’s work has been about very distinct subject matter but when talking about Brenda she can’t help but describe it in the abstract. “The play is about the unknown, the unknowable leaking out and disrupting all that we consider real,” she says.
Ultimately Crowe wants the audience to experience the play on a “guttural, instinctive level. So even if there were no words, or you didn’t speak English, you’d ‘feel’ the play anyway.”
Crowe is a big fan of East London and an advocate for young people breaking into the arts. Before becoming a full-time writer she worked for a youth project in Tower Hamlets. “There is so much talent in East London it’s crazy,” she says. “All young people ever need is an opportunity and then the confidence and support to take it.
“I haven’t worked at The Yard before but I love their work and their approach, and that they’re willing to take big risks on artists and ideas.”
Brenda is at The Yard, Unit 2A, Queen’s Yard, White Post Lane, E9 5EN from 22 September – 17 October theyardtheatre.co.uk
The Yard in Hackney Wick has been voted the second most popular theatre in London.
In an online poll conducted by Time Out, The Yard ranked above the likes of Shakespeare’s Globe and The Young Vic, only to be pipped to the top spot by the National Theatre.
In response to its success, founder and artistic director Jay Miller states that The Yard remains a theatre outside of the establishment.
“We don’t listen to rules. We don’t make dogma. We always try to make something new because that’s what this world needs,” he said.
Recent awards for The Yard include the 2014 Off West End Theatre Awards Special Panel Award for Outstanding Achievement and the 2013 Empty Space Peter Brook/Mobius Award for supporting emerging artists.
This year Beyond Caring, Alexander Zeldin’s play about zero-hours contracts, became the second play developed by The Yard to be transferred to the National Theatre.
Benedict Cumberbatch as Hamlet in the Barbican’s production of the Shakespeare play. Photograph: Johan Persson
It may be the magnetic pull of its lead actor that made this the fastest-selling theatre show in UK history, but in the Barbican’s Hamlet Benedict Cumberbatch is just one of the heavy hitters in a knock-out production.
Lyndsey Turner’s highly-anticipated (and already controversial) production of one of Shakespeare’s most often-performed plays is ambitious, visually lavish and perfectly-pitched. Ciaran Hinds’ Claudius, Anastasia Hille’s Gertrude, Jim Norton’s Polonius and Karl Johnson as the gravedigger are just some of the highlights in an ensemble that bring fresh humour, irony and energy to some of the most well-worn lines in the English language.
They’re supported by yet another impressive set design from Es Devlin, whose extraordinary work you might recognise from previous London shows including The Master and Margarita (also at the Barbican), Chimerica and The Nether, all the way to Jay Z concerts. The music, a powerful part of the show, comes from renowned producer and composer Jon Hopkins, plus Luke Halls on video, Jane Cox on lighting and Christopher Shutt on sound. It’s an electric performance that chews you up and spits you out three hours later.
The best thing about Benedict Cumberbatch in this role is that you don’t feel like you’re watching Benedict Cumberbatch. Despite reports his fans flew from as far as LA to queue for a chance of picking up tickets and his (now virally-shared) appeal to audiences not to film the performance, his celebrity doesn’t overshadow the play.
Maybe it’s because he manages to stay relatively private in the public eye, which is something that made watching Jude Law in the same role quite distracting for example. Maybe it’s because the sheer scale of the production means it hangs less on its lead. At any rate he delivers a powerful, very human and at times hilarious performance in what many see as a milestone role in an actor’s career.
Dressed in scruffy student clothes, sitting alone listening to Nature Boy on his record player as the play opens, he plays a very relatable Prince of Denmark, wrestling with the death of his father and sudden remarriage of his mother to his uncle Claudius. The uncle who killed his father and whom he will spend the rest of the play finding the resolve to take revenge upon.
It’s an energetic performance, as Hamlet shapeshifts with agility from self-loathing despair to rage to comedy. His antic disposition, the method to his ‘madness’, is first manifest with him dressed as a toy soldier and marching on the banquet table. It’s very funny, hinging in many ways on the comic chemistry with Polonius, which is perfectly timed.
During his many speeches there’s clever choreography and lighting to make it seem like the rest of a scene is carrying on in slow motion while he performs soliloquies in the spotlight, which means the play loses none of its momentum. His soliloquies have, of course, been at the centre of heated debate in theatreland over the past weeks.
The play’s multiple re-writes and length (in full it’s four hours and 4,000 lines) mean most productions cut it down, making the text more than usually open to interpretation. Not too much though, it seems, with the production u-turning on its experiment with putting Hamlet’s famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy into Act 1.
One of the biggest stars of the show has to be Es Devlin’s set. It takes advantage of the sheer size and scope of the Barbican’s performance space to house two-storey royal palace rooms at Elsinore in which the play opens. There are striking visualisations of the “unnatural” death of the rightful king and imagery of corruption that underpin the play, including entire blanched trees with dead white flowers hanging suspended upside-down over the new King’s banquet table and dead creepers choking the staircase.
In the second act the entire stage scene is demolished, making Ophelia’s grief and unravelling wits all the more poignant as she treads barefoot in the smoking remains of the castle. Later the same rubble mountain landscape becomes a graveside during the ‘Alas, poor Yorick’ scene and a bleak battle camp as Fortinbras’ men march toward Elsinore. The use of video projection and lighting is particularly striking here, played out across Devlin’s epic designs.
There are moments of breath-taking stagecraft, including the tumultuous close of Act 3 and the bloodbath of the fencing match that will see most remaining characters die. The last, especially, is a masterpiece of choreography and stagecraft that sees the cast swirling in a whirl of light and shadow as Hamlet finally avenges his father.
A triumph all told.
Hamlet is at The Barbican, Silk Street, EC2Y 8DS until 25 October
Each time Dionysos appears on stage in the Almeida Theatre’s new production of the Bakkhai there is a crackle of electricity. A dangerous flash and fizz of escaped current that threatens to shock the nearest heathen into adoration.
Ben Whishaw is the ethereal Dionysos, who states in his opening address “I intend to thrill you, Thebes.” Fresh off the boat, his mission is to convert Greece to his own brand of ecstatic worship just like he converted Asia before them.
The only man that stands in his way is Pentheus, Thebes’ intolerant ruler. Played by Bertie Carvel with conservative restraint, Pentheus displays all of the ignorance and disregard of contemporary politicians in wanting to put down “this Bakkhic nonsense” with the minimum of fuss.
But he doesn’t know what he is dealing with, and rapidly becomes the victim of his own gnawing curiosity.
In keeping with the tradition of 400 BCE, three actors alternate through the main character roles, whilst a ten-strong female chorus support, cajole and critique their decisions in song, chant and lamentation.
Anne Carson’s adaptation of Euripides’ classic text is clean, accessible and totally honest. Where there is no English translation for the original Greek, the character declares it.
Dionysos admits he is known by a different name in every land he has conquered thus far, his mercurial essence impossible to capture definitively within the confines of language.
In performance, the simplicity of Carson’s text has the power to both articulate huge emotions and sensations and equally be thrown away.
Both Whishaw and Carvel play on the sarcasm and informality that characterises so much of contemporary conversation, Whishaw using language to wield great authority and depict puckish giddiness, to torment and to tease.
Because the language is so plain, the audience tunes in on any glimmer of a double meaning. When Pentheus appeals to us – his courtiers – to support him in maintaining order in the land he governs, we giggle at his double entendres.
Just as Dionysus would have us do, we corrupt his words for our own pleasure and turn all to sex.
Pentheus condemns us for disobeying him, but as an audience of voyeurs we are already followers of Dionysos – vocal adherents of wine, ritual and song.
The quiet control of the performances, the constant rhythm and the coldness of the lighting are what lend this production its eerie atmosphere.
The Bakkhai themselves, instead of presenting their ecstasy and devotions through chaos, are uncannily still.
Instilled with a deep sense of peace and joy, they show us what the satisfaction of true worship might look like. They positively glow with the smugness of the brainwashed, gleaming with evangelical self-satisfaction.
As well as producing new productions of three major tragedies the theatre is presenting an extensive series of discussions, debates and readings interrogating the influence of Greeks on contemporary life.
The Greek season at the Almeida promises to be impressively comprehensive. And Bakkhai is its magnificently sinister and supernatural centrepiece.
