Festival of ancient Greek drama concludes with The Bacchae

Following a packed month full of remarkable productions of ancient Greek drama, the annual International Festival of Ancient Greek Drama will conclude next weekend with a performance by the National Theatre of Greece at ancient Curium. Euripides’ The Bacchae, the tragedy of mysticism and ecstasy but also of barbarity, will be presented under the direction of Thanos Papakonstantinou. The performance will be “an enthralling artistic experience, orchestrated by the god of theatre himself, Dionysus,” organisers say.

August 9 and 10 will see the performance, presented in Greek but with surtitles in English and Greek as well. This closing festival production is suitable for audiences above 16-years-old and takes place in the city of Thebes.

There, the young and beloved King Pentheus rules when a mysterious stranger arrives, claiming to be an emissary of an unknown god, Dionysus. Pentheus, who has just risen to power, refuses to accept the rituals and the divine status of Dionysus, and by virtue of his power bans the spread of the new religion. His defiance arouses the wrath of the god, who lures the women of the city – led by the King’s mother, Agave – into the madness of nature rituals, crazy dances, massive orgies and free love. 

The inevitable conflict between the law and these rituals evolves into a personal, bitter conflict between the two leaders, a tragic reversal of persecutor and persecuted, which leads to Pentheus’ doom by his own mother, thus also signifying the destruction of the house of Cadmus.

This Euripidean tragedy is marked by strict consistency of form and enormous inner strength, while simultaneously revealing the poet’s keen interest in mysticism and ecstasy. The tragedy’s central dramatic themes are the potentialities of the soul, human virtue, self-consciousness, prudence and delusion, the rational and the irrational, all of which emerge from the antithesis between man and God, the same antithesis from which the drama’s tragic conflict arises. 

“Euripides wrote The Bacchae towards the end of his lifetime, in the late 5th century BC. There he brings back to the stage the god Dionysus, the founder of the genre. The god of theatre, otherness, dismemberment and fusion, bliss and destruction, sets up a play that Euripides intended to end with a dismembered body that no one collects,” says Papakonstantinou, who directs the second summer production of the National Theatre of Greece with a remarkable cast of artists.

The Bacchae

Greek production by the National Theatre of Greece. Part of the International Festival of Ancient Greek Drama. August 9-10. Curium Ancient Theatre, Limassol district. 9pm. In Greek, with English and Greek surtitles. www.soldoutticketbox.com