Disclaimer first: This will be the idiot’s review, as I am
not familiar enough with Euripides' play The Bacchae, its various re-stagings, or even Classical
Greek Theatre.
But I know what I like.
The Bacchanals is
certainly deserving of a more informed critic. Adopting the metatheatrical
frame of actors preparing before a performance, the play tells the story of the power dynamics behind the all-female
chorus of 6, as they strategise, form alliances, and plot against one another. The
central figure of Dionysus – omnipresent and yet invisible – presents both an
object of their anger and their chief tormentor. What follows is a kind of
classical tragedy re-set in the dressing rooms of the British theatre, as the
women jostle, ally, and attack their way through various formations of human
struggle.
It’s a faultless premise that renders the politics of the
original play accessible for a new audience, while casting informed and
refreshing comment on the play itself. Watching the actors back-stab and bitch
their way around the all-white Ikea set which forms the casual environment of
the dressing room – intensely private, almost sacred – is as deeply interesting
as it is pleasurable. Their machinations are only interrupted by bursts of seamlessly-inserted
direct quotations from Euripides’ The
Bacchae, which itself brings a certain dream-like violence. It’s a play that’s not afraid to be trashy
as hell, and the effect is a kind of Real
Housewives of Camden, only with a higher potency, and probably less men.
