Bacchai
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- 12٫99 US$
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- 12٫99 US$
وصف الناشر
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Multidisciplinary poet-scholar Carson (Antigonick) unveils a stripped-down and faithful "new version" of Euripides's classic tragedy. Though she has been known to take liberties with her interpretations of classical Greek literature, here the Dionysian "desire/ before the desire,/ the lick of beginning to know you don't know," appears much in the vein of her previous translations of classic dramas. The dialogue is imbued with a minimalist, almost rustic conversationalism that's countered by gripping and dramatic choral odes, a slithering Bakkhic entrance song, and the crazed fragmentation of Agave's awakening from the Bakkhic spell. At times, Carson puts forth a kind of affectless droll, a mode that might serve the dialogue but falls flat in the work's opening and closing moments ("Here I am./ Dionysos."; "That's how this went/ today."). Otherwise, this rendition is a hilarious and razor-sharp romp full of sex, violence, and drink-guzzling (Dionysos: "They say he gave the gift of wine to men:/ why, without wine we've no freedom from pain./ Without wine there's no sex./ Without sex/ life isn't worth living.// ."). In traversing the eternal pull between what humans call reason and what that reason deems primal, Carson's trademark simplicity allows this work to feel simultaneously ancient and contemporary.
