Clytemnestra shooting porn in a bathtub with her lover
How would ancient dramas look today? Although there are no bloodthirsty kings any more, drunkenness with power and lust for war are faults that resonate with people even today. The students of the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media brought the mythical figures of ancient Greece to the Divadlo na Orlí in Brno and showed how they would live and act in our own times.
The play Dionysus City combines Euripides’ tragedy Trojan Women and the Oresteia trilogy by Aeschylus. If you expected a philosophical dive into how those old texts and thoughts overlap with the present, you would probably be disappointed. An initially promising level of intellectual depth vanished a few minutes into the play, and a crazy ride began. In the introduction, while Hekube laments (followed by the choir), a serious tone – befitting a tale of plunder, abuse of power, and callousness – is set. But the scene comes to its end, and so does the seriousness. A sitcom about an ancient Greek family starts instead. First, two chapters of the Oresteia trilogy were shown as a series about a household that works along modern, conventional lines. Mother Clytemnestra (Aniela Ebel) shortens the wait for her husband by playing sexual games with her lover Aighistos (Julia-Mareen Korte), daughter Electra (Ema Marie Nielsen) is a rebellious teenager who has a troubled relationship with her mother, and lost son Oresteus (Samuel Mikel) returns in second season to kill his stepfather.
The scenography in this play was very simple, formed of just a metal construction in a cubical shape with white curtains, later supplemented by a bathtub (hidden behind the curtain) and two chairs. With this minimalistic set, there was a space for the use of live-cinema without it being excessive. Murders, which happened out of direct sight in the bathtub behind the curtain, were shown to the audience by projecting them onto the white fabric on the set. By choosing a video display of the killing, the creators created a paradox, for the act being performed out of sight was a common procedure in ancient theatre.
The young actors worked well together. The performances were balanced, civil, and at the right moments had the right amount of stylization. Using cross-gender casting helped with the absurd and comic atmosphere. But that didn’t help this play much. Despite the way the actors worked together, the final product can’t be considered a success. Apparently, the poorly-handled dramaturgy couldn’t give the story any meaning, and so it ended up being some kind of retelling of ancient fables in modern form, a thing perhaps attractive for young audiences.
