A disturbing tragicomedy from ancient Greece, The Bacchae involves a vengeful two-faced god in disguise as a mortal, an arrogant king about to get his fatal come-uppance, mobs of frenzied women, an earthquake, a bloodbath, cross-dressing, people changed into snakes, and assorted other mad doings.
Thank you, Euripides: Your 405 BC play gives artists plenty to work with.
Such a bizarre story—it essentially cautions viewers to achieve a balance between the sane and irrational sides of life, and good luck with that—appears to be right up the creative alley for director Anne Bogart and the SITI Company, which favors imaginative staging of the classics and new works.
Certainly there is imagination and artistry to be appreciated in SITI’s production of The Bacchae, which opened the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival last night at the BAM Harvey Theater, but the company’s interpretation of the drama ultimately felt somewhat flat.
The play’s central figure is Dionysus, the god of wine, theater, and revelry. Dionysus is wickedly depicted here by Ellen Lauren with a leonine tangle of hair, a ferocious smile, and a manic air that suggests both hot times and the hell paid for it in the morning.
Dionysus materializes in that unluckiest of Greek cities, Thebes, with vengeance on his mind because its royal house refuses to recognize, let alone worship, him. So this “roaring god” transforms all of the Theban women into a drunk, sexy horde enjoying a rave-up in the mountains.
Hearing this, the young and rigid King Pentheus (a tightly-coiled Eric Berryman) bans Dionysian worship and confronts Dionysus, now in disguise as a priest of his order. Although the god is imprisoned, he easily frees himself, causes further mayhem, and somehow inveigles a voyeuristic Pentheus into dressing as a woman to spy on the mob. Giddy in his drag as a blond bombshell wearing a flowered frock, Pentheus dances off to a hideous death at the unknowing hands of Agave, his mother, and the maddened bacchantes.
Okay, that’s enough plot. It’s important to note that much of this action, including those female ecstasies and Pentheus’ agonies, happens offstage and is reported by messengers. (That’s just the way ancient Greek drama works.) Aaron Poochigian’s translation is fluent in its rhythms and vivid wordplay while actors J. Ed Araiza, Leon Ingulsrud, and Gian-Murray Gianino invest their speeches with feeling. So do Barney O’Hanlon and Stephen Duff Webber, who respectively portray the blind seer Tiresias and Pentheus’ grandfather as comical geezers who are wiser than they initially seem.
All of these actors, with several others, double as the inevitable Greek chorus, garbed in unisex grey suit jackets, pleated black skirts and running shoes. Wielding staffs, they march around or sometimes make Robert Wilson-esque hand gestures in reaction to whatever news breaks from offstage.
Shunning an expressionist approach to the play, Bogart stages everything fairly gravely, with an occasional note of levity, such as the boxed wine one Dionysian celebrant totes on his shoulder. Brian H Scott simply provides white drapes for the set, which his lighting streaks with colors. Giving the events resonance is the wonderfully layered sound design by Darron L West that ranges from seismic rumbles to subtle buzzing that suggests mental stress. And was it West or Bogart who chose to open the show with a gutsy recording of “I Put a Spell on You”?
A significant choice that Bogart made, and even addressed in her program note, was a decision to have Aiko Aizawa, in the role of Agave, speak the penultimate scene in Japanese: Agave, in a delusional state, brandishes the severed head of her son Pentheus, which she thinks is a lion’s head. Agave’s triumphant emotion curdles into horror once she recognizes the truth. Although Aizawa’s acting is intense and even wrenching, the use of projected titles would help audiences appreciate this key sequence.
One wonders also about the wisdom of finally dressing Dionysus in a janitor’s outfit to sweep up the mess he’s made. Likely it is meant to signify this cruel god’s insouciant attitude towards the mere mortals he destroys. The wave of giggles that his appearance provoked from the audience, however, suggests that the effect was more facetious than fearsome.
Due to these issues regarding comprehension and tone in the 100-minute presentation, The Bacchae does not register as forcefully as it might. Ah, well, as Euripides suggests, it is hard to balance the choices that one grapples with in life—and also in the theater.
The Bacchae opened October 3, 2018, at the BAM Harvey Theater and runs through October 7. Tickets and information: bam.org
