Theater: Olympus on the Thames

• Share

(4 of 4)

As here constituted, Helen is almost only an amusing cartoon skit. The curtain rises on an Egyptian sarcophagus, and, lolling on top of it, dressed in little more than a beach towel, is the real Helen, seemingly on a summer holiday. Euripides' caustic irony is that a mirror image of Helen went with Paris to Troy. Thousands upon thousands of Greeks and Trojans have suffered and died in a ten-year war for this saucy mirage. Orestes is even more anachronistic when Electra appears toting a submachine gun, rather like the pho tograph of Patty Hearst as Tania. In "The Gods" plays, Barton accelerates the tempo of the tragedies and elides parts of the stories, after somewhat reducing their gravity. Moreover, pro-feminist sentiments are catered to by rendering certain lines as if in oral italics. That is surely an error, since the women in Greek tragedy are the strongest feminine figures in all of dramatic literature. The race that bred Medea and Antigone possessed no Doll's Houses.

Any enterprise of this magnitude must have flaws, but in this case the virtues formidably out weigh them. While the Greeks had no word for sin, this is indeed a grand parable of sin, grace and redemption, which very nearly produces catharsis in the classic sense.

With the aid of towering performances and stark sets, plus the ensemble work of the Royal Shake speare troupe, John Barton has elucidated the meaning of the Greek texts, evoking the ideals that animated them. A special citation should be awarded to Nick Bicat for his inestimably evocative music.

Taverna-like, elegiac, militant, his melodies evoke the epoch when Attica was vernal and bore something more than gnarled olive trees.

To Barton must belong the final honors. He has brought us the Greeks' greatest gifts and restored the original titans of drama to sour petty stages. May Zeus smile 3 on him.

—T.E. Kalem