Modern Adaptations of Greco-Roman Classics.

Kings by Christopher Logue. ''Being a retelling of the first two books of Homer's Iliad.''  Performed by Alan Howard
“Less a translation than a vivid re-imagining, Kings moves with cinematic speed to create full-blooded and haunting portraits of the great figures of Trojan War. The mythic clashes of heroes and gods evoke the battles of Stalingrad and Normandy through Logue’s stark contemporary verse, which has been hailed as “beautifully rhythmic, controlled and urgent” (The Independent) and which has earned him the Whitbread Prize. Kings has previously played on the BBC, at the Tricycle and the Royal National Theatres in London, and as part of the Edinburgh Festival. This production is a revised version of the 2001 American premiere. “
“Kings aggressively turns the listener into a co-creator. Zeus, Hera, Agamemnon, Priam, Achilles, Hector, Odysseus and many others spring to life in the voices of two actors.... Seeing and hearing them is a profoundly ... exciting experience.... When the angry debates of gods and men end and the soldiers, we hear, ‘moved out and fell in love with war again,’ our hearts ache.” (D. J. R. Bruckner, New York Times.)

War Music by Christopher Logue. "Being a retelling of Books 16 to 19 of Homer's Iliad" Performed by Alan Howard
Music by Donald Fraser. Taken from Logue's ambitious translation of Homer.
'Less a translation than an adaptation. Less an adaptation, in fact, than an original poem of considerable power... The language of War Music is applied with such a barbaric certainty of touch that, even at its most gorgeous or most ferocious, we are hardly aware of it. This is a work of a highly literary quality in which everything is vividly imagined, every image freshly minted.' Derek Mahon, Observer; 'The best translation of Homer since Pope's...' Gary Wills, New York Review of Books; 'Homer is re-experienced, is given the mystery of creative echo... Translation of genius.' George Steiner, Sunday Times; 'A work of great virtuosity, something completely original in style and stance... It is tremendously graphic, full of felicities as well as stark colloquialisms pointing up the drama. It is the perfect introduction to Homer, faithful in tone and spirit to the essential Greekness of the old poem.' Lawrence Durrell, London Magazine

Iph by Colin Teevan. Iph… is a forceful and resonant version of Euripedes’ Iphigeneia in Aulis.
Agamemnon, leader of the Greeks, faces a dark choice on the brink of the Trojan War. He must choose between his love for his daughter, Iphigeneia and his nation’s ambitions to take revenge on Troy. Should he sacrifice Iphigeneia to the gods for a fair wind for the Greek fleet becalmed at Aulis or should he save his daughter?
Further Background: In Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis, Agamemnon is told by Calchas that in order for the winds to allow him to sail to Troy, Agamemnon must sacrifice Iphigenia to Artemis. Agamemnon fools Clytemnestra into bringing Iphigenia to Aulis by sending a letter to Clytemnestra telling her that Iphigenia will be married to Achilles. There is one moment in the play where Agamemnon regrets his decision and tries to send another letter telling them not to come, however Menelaus intercepts the letter. After Agamemnon and Menelaus have an argument, Clytemnestra arrives at Aulis with Iphigenia and Orestes. Agamemnon tries to convince Clytemnestra to go back to Argos while he marries Iphigenia to Achilles. Clytemnestra refuses to leave and plans on marrying off her daughter the proper way. When Clytemnestra sees Achilles she brings up the marriage, however Achilles doesn’t know what she is talking about and slowly the truth comes out about Agamemnon’s true plan. Achilles vows to help prevent the murder of Iphigenia even after the Greeks throw stones at him. After Iphigenia and Clytemnestra mourn together, Iphigenia makes the noble decision to die in honor and by her own will and asks Achilles not to stop the men. When Iphigenia is brought to the altar to be slain she willingly allows herself to be sacrificed.
Euripides’ character of Iphigenia holds many complex meanings that stem from her decision to willingly sacrifice herself. There are several possible reasons for Iphigenia’s decision. The first is that Iphigenia wants to please her father and protect the family name. Not only does Iphigenia want to please her father, but she also forgives him for making the decision to sacrifice her. The second reason is that Iphigenia sees this as a patriotic cause. Iphigenia realizes that if she dies, then the men can sail to Troy and win and protect their own women. If the men did not get to Troy to defeat the Trojans then all the Greek women would be raped and possibly killed. Thus, Iphigenia sees her death as saving hundreds of women. A third reason for Iphigenia’s choice could be a more selfish reason. Iphigenia wants to be remembered with honor through her self-sacrifice, unlike how Helen of Troy is viewed. While the concept of glory is mostly seen in the men who fight, here it is seen in Iphigenia. A final possible reason is that Iphigenia sees bad in her father and now has nothing to live for.

The Bacchae - After Euripides by Derek Mahon.
Derek Mahon's Bacchae, like Euripides' play, moves speedily through a dazzling and bewildering display of tone, rhythm and feeling. From Dionysus' slangy craftiness in the prologue to the despairing grief of Agave and Cadmus at the end of the play the audience is forced constantly to shift and readjust its point of view. The result is a kind of ethical and emotional vertigo where the boundaries blur between laughter and anguish, reason and illusion, speech and song, kindness and cruelty.
The resulting disorientation makes familiar territory strange and dangerous. Mahon's great achievement in this transformation emerges most strikingly in the beauty of his choral odes whose clarity and grace linger hauntingly over the scenes of human folly and divine anger.
Further Background: The Dionysus in Euripides' tale is a young god, angry that his mortal family, the royal house of Cadmus, has denied him a place of honor as a deity. His mortal mother, Semele, was a mistress of Zeus, and while pregnant, she was killed because she looked upon Zeus in his divine form. Most of Semele's family, however, including her sisters Ino, Autonoe, and Agave, refused to believe that Dionysus was the son of Zeus, and the young god is spurned in his home. He has traveled throughout Asia and other foreign lands, gathering a cult of female worshipers (Bacchantes), and at the start of the play has returned to take revenge on the house of Cadmus, disguised as a stranger. He has driven the women of Thebes, including his aunts, into an ecstatic frenzy, sending them dancing and hunting on Mount Kithaeron, much to the horror of their families. Complicating matters, his cousin, the young king Pentheus, has declared a ban on the worship of Dionysus throughout Thebes.

Greece Versus Persia - Aeschylus in Athens by John Fletcher. Set in Athens when Aeschylus the playwright was a young man and witnessed the sacking of the city by the Persians.Theatre and the power of rehtoric in time of war inspired him then and he wrote the 'Oresteia' in response to his memory of that part of his life.

Heresy by John Spurling.
John Spurling's play tells the story of Hypatia - known to history as the first female mathematician and philosopher - who was killed by a mob in AD415 following a power struggle between Cyril, Archbishop of Alexandria, and Orestes, the Prefect of Alexandria and a friend of Hypatia. The play explores the conflict between early Christian orthodoxy and the less belligerent doctrines of neo-Platonism, and investigates the consequences of mixing politics and belief.
Further Background: The mathematician and philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria was the daughter of the mathematician Theon Alexandricus (ca. 335–405) and last librarian of the Library of Alexandria in the Museum of Alexandria. She was educated at Athens and in Italy; at about AD 400, she became head of the Platonist school at Alexandria, where she imparted the knowledge of Plato and Aristotle to any student; the pupils included pagans, Christians, and foreigners. The contemporary 5th-century sources do not identify Hypatia of Alexandria as practicant of any religion, but, two hundred years later, the 7th-century Egyptian Coptic bishop John of Nikiû identified her as a Hellenistic pagan and that "she was devoted at all times to magic, astrolabes and instruments of music, and she beguiled many people through her Satanic wiles". Nonetheless, despite the historical record, the Christians later used Hypatia as symbolic of Virtue. The Byzantine Suda encyclopaedia reported that Hypatia was "the wife of Isidore the Philosopher" (apparently Isidore of Alexandria); however, Isidore of Alexandria was not born until long after Hypatia's death, and no other philosopher of that name contemporary with Hypatia is known. Moreover, the Suda also stated that "she remained a virgin" and that she rejected a suitor with her menstrual rags, saying that they demonstrated "nothing beautiful" about carnal desire.
Hypatia corresponded with former pupil Synesius of Cyrene, who became bishop of Ptolemais in AD 410; and an author of the Christian Holy Trinity doctrine derived from the Platonic education he received from her. Together with the references by the pagan philosopher Damascius, these are the extant records left by Hypatia's pupils at the Platonist school of Alexandria.
The contemporary Christian historiographer Socrates Scholasticus described her in Ecclesiastical History:
“ There was a woman at Alexandria named Hypatia, daughter of the philosopher Theon, who made such attainments in literature and science, as to far surpass all the philosophers of her own time. Having succeeded to the school of Plato and Plotinus, she explained the principles of philosophy to her auditors, many of whom came from a distance to receive her instructions. On account of the self-possession and ease of manner which she had acquired in consequence of the cultivation of her mind, she not infrequently appeared in public in the presence of the magistrates. Neither did she feel abashed in going to an assembly of men. For all men on account of her extraordinary dignity and virtue admired her the more.” —Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History
Hypatia was believed to be the cause of strained relations between Orestes, the Imperial Roman Prefect, and the Patriarch Cyril, thus she attracted the hatred of the Christians of Alexandria, who wanted the politician and the priest to reconcile. One day, in March AD 415, during Lent, a Christian mob of Nitrian monks led by "Peter the Reader," waylaid Hypatia's chariot as she travelled home. The monks attacked Hypatia, then stripped her naked, to humiliate her, then dragged her through the streets to the recently Christianised Caesareum church, where they killed her. The reports suggest that the mob of Christian monks flayed her body with ostraca (pot shards), and then burned her alive.

Burn the Aeneid by Martyn Wade.
What happens if an author gives instructions for his work to be destroyed when he dies? A unholy row. It was just such a row that broke out at the deathbed of Publius Vergilius Marol in Brindisium in 19 BC. So why is this important? Because the dying man was better known as Vergil and the work to be burned - The Aeneid. Martyn Wade manages to turn Vergil's deathbed command into a fine comedy.
Further Background: The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil from 29 to 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It is composed of roughly 10,000 lines in dactylic hexameter. The first six of the poem's twelve books tell the story of Aeneas's wanderings from Troy to Italy, and the poem's second half tells of the Trojans' ultimately victorious war upon the Latins, under whose name Aeneas and his Trojan followers are destined to be subsumed.
The hero Aeneas was already known to Greco-Roman legend and myth, having been a character in the Iliad; Virgil took the disconnected tales of Aeneas' wanderings, his vague association with the foundation of Rome and a personage of no fixed characteristics other than a scrupulous piety, and fashioned this into a compelling founding myth or nationalist epic that at once tied Rome to the legends of Troy, glorified traditional Roman virtues and legitimized the Julio-Claudian dynasty as descendants of the founders, heroes and gods of Rome and Troy.

The Lysistrata Project by Ryan Craig.
A contemporary re-working of Aristophanes' classic play, developed with the help of young people living and studying in London.
Further Background:Lysistrata is one of eleven surviving plays written by Aristophanes. Originally performed in classical Athens in 411 BC, it is a comic account of one woman's extraordinary mission to end The Peloponnesian War. Lysistrata persuades the women of Greece to withhold sexual gratification from their husbands and lovers as a means of forcing the men to negotiate peace — a strategy that, consequently, inflames the battle between the sexes. The play is notable for being an early exposé of sexual politics in a male-dominated society.
One of the few surviving examples of Old Comedy, the dramatic structure employed in Lysistrata represents a departure from conventions that organize Aristophanes' earlier plays. In particular the absence of a formal parabasis, or choral ode, and the informality of debate during the agon draw attention to the absurdity of a classical woman engaging in public debate.

The Cure at Troy by Seamus Heaney. Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney's version of Sophocles's 'Philoctetes'.
Abandoned on an uninhabited island and obsessed by the wounds of the past, Philoctetes is forced to decide what is more important: his need for revenge or a possible future.
The tragic story of the forgotten hero, Philoctetes, provides a unique insight into the conflicts between personal moral beliefs and political calling. Odysseus persuades the heroic Neoptolemus into tricking the mamed Philoctetes into giving up the bow of Hercules. This act challenges the admired traits of the ancient world and draws into question the importance of personal beliefs. As each character represents a different aspect of the Greek world, a fight for beliefs - fidelity, pity, piety - endures. As for the translation itself, Heaney provides a beautiful interpretation of the story as seen in the words of the chorus:

History says, Don't hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.

This enriched translation strays slightly from the ancient text in order to enhance the understanding of the modern reader. Des Cave – Philoctetes
Further Background: Philoctetes was the son of King Poeas of the city of Meliboea in Thessaly and was the subject of at least two plays by Sophocles. When Heracles wore the shirt of Nessus and built his funeral pyre, no one would light it for him except for Philoctetes or in other versions his father Poeas. This gained him the favor of the newly deified Heracles. Because of this, Philoctetes or Poeas is given Heracles' bow and poisoned arrows.
Philoctetes was one of the many eligible Greeks who competed for the hand of Helen, the Spartan princess; according to legend, she was the most beautiful woman in the world. As such, he was required to participate in the conflict to reclaim her for Menelaus in the Trojan War. Philoctetes was stranded on the Island of Lemnos or Chryse by the Greeks on the way to Troy. There are at least four separate tales about what happened to strand Philoctetes on his journey to Troy, but all indicate that he received a wound on his foot that festered and had a terrible smell. One version holds that Philoctetes was bitten by a snake that Hera sent to molest him as punishment for his or his father's service to Heracles. Another tradition says that the Greeks forced Philoctetes to show them where Heracles's ashes were deposited. Philoctetes would not break his oath by speech, so he went to the spot and placed his foot upon the site. Immediately, he was injured in the foot that touched the soil over the ashes. Yet another tradition has it that when the Achaeans, en route to Troy at the beginning of the war, came to the island of Tenedos, Achilles angered Apollo by killing King Tenes, allegedly the god's son. When, in expiation, the Achaeans offered a sacrifice to Apollo, a snake came out from the altar and bit Philoctetes. Finally, it is said that Philoctetes received his terrible wound on the island of Chryse, when he unknowingly trespassed into the shrine of the nymph after whom the island was named (this is the version in the extant play by Sophocles).
Regardless of the cause of the wound, Philoctetes was exiled by the Greeks and was angry at the treatment he received from Odysseus, King of Ithaca, who had advised the Atreidae to strand him. Medôn took control of Philoctetes' men, and Philoctetes himself remained on Lemnos, alone, for ten years.
Helenus, the prophetic son of King Priam of Troy, was forced to reveal, under torture, that one of the conditions of the Greeks' winning the war was that they needed the bow and arrows of Heracles. Upon hearing this, Odysseus and a group of men (usually including Diomedes) rushed back to Lemnos to recover Heracles' weapons. (As Sophocles writes it in his play named Philoctetes, Odysseus is accompanied by Neoptolemus, Achilles' son, also known as Pyrrhus. Other versions of the myth don't include Neoptolemus.) Surprised to find the archer alive, the Greeks balked on what to do next. Odysseus tricked the weaponry away from Philoctetes, but Diomedes refused to take the weapons without the man. Heracles, who had become a god many years earlier, came down from Olympus and told Philoctetes to go and that he would be healed by the son of Asclepius and win great honor as a hero of the Achaean army. Once back in military company outside Troy, they employed either Machaon the surgeon (who may have been killed by Eurypylus of Mysia, son of Telephus, depending on the account) or more likely Podalirius the physician, both sons of the immortal physician Asclepius, to heal his wound permanently. Philoctetes challenged and would have killed Paris, son of Priam, in single combat were it not for the debates over future Greek strategy. In one telling it was Philoctetes that killed Paris, he fired four times, the first arrow went wide, the second struck his bow hand, the third hit him in the right eye, the fourth hit him in the heel, there was no need of a fifth shot. Philoctetes sided with Neoptolemus about continuing to try to storm the city. They were the only two to think so because they had not had the war-weariness of the prior ten years. Afterward, Philoctetes was among those chosen to hide inside the Trojan Horse, and during the sack of the city he killed many famed Trojans.
After the war, he returned home to Meliboea, where he found a revolt. From there he went to Italy where he founded the towns of Petilia and Crimissa in Calabria and established the Brutti. He also aided Sicilian Greeks. When he died, he was buried next to the Sybaris River.

The Trial and Death of Socrates by Sebastian Baczkiewicz.
A play focusing on the mystery surrounding Socrates's trial and subsequent execution, the reasons for which have long puzzled historians. Socrates has been found guilty of blasphemy and corrupting the youth of the city. On the eve of his execution his chief accuser Meletus is murdered. Josias, newly returned to Athens, is given the task of investigating the murder.
Further Background: The Trial of Socrates refers to the trial and the subsequent execution of the classical Athenian philosopher Socrates in 399 BC. Socrates was tried on the basis of two notoriously ambiguous charges: corrupting the youth and impiety (in Greek, asebeia). More specifically, Socrates’ accusers cited two "impious" acts: "failing to acknowledge the gods that the city acknowledges" and "introducing new deities." A majority of the 501 dikasts (Athenian citizens chosen by lot to serve as jurors) voted to convict him. Consistent with common practice, the dikasts determined Socrates’ punishment with another vote. Socrates was ultimately sentenced to death by drinking a hemlock-based liquid. Primary sources for accounts of the trial are given by two of Socrates’ students, Plato and Xenophon; well known later interpretations include those of the journalist I.F. Stone and the classics scholar Robin Waterfield. The trial is one of the most famous of all time.

The Riot Act by Tom Paulin (after Sophocles' Antigone)
Review of the stage version: Gate, Notting Hill, Review by Philip Fisher (2003)
Antigone is a very powerful play and by translating it to a Northern Ireland early in the Troubles, Tom Paulin gives the claustrophobic drama a new twist.
Creon ("The Big Man") is one of those bigots who spout platitudes about peace but provoke war. His refusal to allow Antigone to bury her guerrilla brother Polynices is the start of her tragedy but also his own.
Antigone's nobility as she follows her brave destiny is seen throughout this distillation of Sophocles' work. In particular Katherine Parkinson delivers an excellent, condemnatory final speech that commences in despair but becomes increasingly powerful.
The structure is clever as each actor in Alan Cox' ensemble is given a moment of glory before falling back into the mass. The parts are generally good whether as a king, like Christopher Hunter's Creon or a commoner like timid Glaswegian guard, Gareth Glen.
This intense hour-long play succeeds, partly as a result of Paulin's tough but poetic contemporary language but also because the characters in the tragedy, whether Greek or Northern Irish, are recognisable today.
http://www.britishtheatreguide.info/reviews/riotact-rev.htm
Further Background: Antigone is a daughter of the accidentally incestuous marriage between King Oedipus of Thebes and his mother Jocasta. She is the subject of a popular story in which she attempts to secure a respectable burial for her brother Polynices, even though he was a traitor to Thebes and the law forbids even mourning for him, on pain of death.
In the oldest version of the story, the funeral of Polynices takes place during Oedipus's reign in Thebes. However, in the best-known versions, Sophocles's tragedies Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone, it occurs in the years after Oedipus's banishment and death, and Antigone has to struggle against Creon. In Sophocles's version, Both Antigone's brothers are killed in battle against the state. After Oedipus's death, it was decided that the two brothers, Eteocles and Polynice were to reign Thebes taking turns. Eteocles, however, did not want to give away his power causing Polynice to leave Thebes to set up an army. In the fight against Thebes, the two brothers kill each other. After this event, Creon declares that, as punishment, Polynice's body must be left on the plain outside the city to rot and be eaten by animals. Eteocles, on the other hand had been buried as tradition warrants. Antigone determines this to be unjust, immoral and against the laws of the gods, and is determined to bury her brother regardless of Creon's law. She attempts to persuade her sister Ismene to join her, but fails. Antigone buries her brother by herself; eventually Creon's guards discover this and capture her. Antigone is brought before Creon, where she declares that she knew Creon's law but chose to break it, expounding upon the superiority of 'divine law' to that made by man. She defies his arguments, provoking his wrath and punishment.
Sophocles' Antigone ends in disaster, with Antigone hanging herself after being walled up, and Creon's son Haemon (or Haimon), who loved Antigone, killing himself after finding her body. Queen Eurydice, wife of King Creon, also kills herself at the end of the story due to seeing such actions allowed by her husband. She had been forced to weave throughout the entire story and her death alludes to Greek Mythology's Fates.
The dramatist Euripides also wrote a play called Antigone, which is lost, but some of the text was preserved by later writers and in passages in his Phoenissae. In Euripides, the calamity is averted by the intercession of Dionysus and is followed by the marriage of Antigone and Haemon.
Different elements of the legend appear in other places. A description of an ancient painting by Philostratus refers to Antigone placing the body of Polynices on the funeral pyre, and this is also depicted on a sarcophagus in the Villa Doria Pamphili in Rome. And in Hyginus' version of the legend, founded apparently on a tragedy by some follower of Euripides, Antigone, on being handed over by Creon to her lover Haemon to be slain, is secretly carried off by him and concealed in a shepherd's hut, where she bears him a son, Maeon. When the boy grows up, he attends some funeral games at Thebes, and is recognized by the mark of a dragon on his body. This leads to the discovery that Antigone is still alive. The demi-god Heracles then intercedes, pleading in vain with Creon for Haemon, who slew himself after finding Antigone's corpse. This intercession by Heracles is also represented on a painted vase.

The Noble Romans. Six-part radio adaptation of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar (parts 1-3) and Antony and Cleopatra (parts 4-6) by Dickon Reed. With Peter Whitman as narrator.

Aristophanes Against The World by Martyn Wade.
This is a difficult play to describe without spoiling it. It's a romp through many of the funnier scenes from several of Aristophanes' comedies knitted together around Diciopolis, whose business is being wrecked by the war with Sparta, his father, who spends his days on juries at the criminal courts convicting anyone who comes before him, his profligate teenaged son who still rides a hobby horse, and his fawning dogs, Distemper and Rabies. Meanwhile Clive Merrison, in the guise of Aristophanes, comments on the action, and gives a good lesson in the elements of Greek drama. Based on material from plays: Wasps, Clouds, Peace, and Frogs. Directed by Cherry Cookson.

A Thousand Ships by Mark Haddon .
The incomparable Jane Lapotaire stars as Helen of Troy, who recalls the pain of having a face and body so beautiful that no one could see past them to the person underneath.