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Theatre Review Brighton Bacchanalia

MIKE AIKEN revels in a gripping community production of Euripedes's subversive masterpiece

Bakkhai
Thirdspace Theatre, Brighton People’s Theatre, Ceda Tanc Dance
Brighton Festival

AT first sight, a play written by Euripides – the Greek dramatist who died in 406 BC – might not set hearts throbbing in this digital age. 

Yet under the chalk cliff by Brighton’s White Hawk estate, a huge cast of young and older actors conjured a spectacular modern version of the drama Bakkhai in the Brighton Festival this year. 

The creative team for this play, led by artistic director Tanushka Marah, worked in local communities with people – from early teens to late retirement – to co-create a highly relevant version for our times.

Originally, Dionysus was the god of wine, festivity and fertility in Greek mythology. He was associated with the bacchants – a community of free women keen on dancing and festivity thought to induce the mind state of bacchanalia – but he was also a trickster.

In this adaption, Pentheus (a convincingly haughty Alec Watson) has taken the corporate career. Meanwhile his sister, Agave, has abandoned a rich and privileged family life to go native with the camp rebels. They are sibling adversaries symbolising a polarised society near collapse.

Young people initially seek out the ancient gods for some help: water is running out fast. But the camp is split. There are three idealistic, vibrant, strident tribes, played with passion and energy by the mostly young cast, all seeking to challenge the existing system.

The performance starts in a youth club next door to a basketball court surrounded by high fencing. This subtly doubles up as a zone of imprisonment where the audience is, literally, captive. Young people begin presenting ideas for a better and more just future. Meanwhile, the rich – dressed appropriately in black suits, white shirts and ties – pour scorn and ridicule on these ideas from outside the cage.

The pace intensifies in the second act as tensions grow within, and between the tribes. The leader of the Athenian warriors, Jay (a brooding Vito Taskin) wants revolution and a draining of the capitalist swamp. 

Throughout, the epic drama is nicely undercut by a troupe of irreverent “crows” and the heartfelt, random thoughts of everyman Tommy, a winningly vulnerable Sonny Attwood.

The Apollonian table — a kind of last supper — sees the blind prophet Tiresias (a hypnotic, intense Jamie Johnson) warn of the end of the world. Meanwhile, the Bacchans led by Dionysus, embodied with commanding charisma by Tegwen Edwards in post-punk costume, conjure an earthquake to swallow the corporates. 

Bakkhai was a collaboration between ThirdSpace Theatre, Brighton People’s Theatre, and Ceyda Tanc Dance. It involved a cast of 60 and a creative team of 40 – aged eight to 60 – engaged in writing, costumes, lights, sound, stage management and choreography. 

“We speak to you from the future,” says one of the protagonists. Almost as soon as this was said, an ominous pale blue cloud passed over the playground as a sea fog blew in and visibility dropped to a spooky 200 metres.

For the finale, the audience are led out of the compound towards the hill, where the Ceydr Tanc dance group reach a suitably Bacchant crescendo as Pentheus faced his bloody end. There were red flags and flares, uncanny faces and voices from half way up the chalk cliff. This was an epic production, a fantastic spectacle, and an extraordinary dramatic achievement.

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