We had a small crowd for opening night, but they were enough to answer the question: “How is the audience going to perceive this play?” After weeks of wrestling with what Euripides meant to convey and working out how best to convey it, we have feedback. Three comments in particular stand out. There was the hushed, “Whoa!” in the blackout before the intermission, the surprised remark that when Dionysus is on stage there is "a kind of healing energy" that comes from him, and (my favorite) the enthused remarks of two visitors from the UK who marveled at the quality of the performance and said, “Incredible! We will always remember this.” That’s pretty much all an actor and director could hope for - an affirmation that the choices made really do work.
Especially since those choices were so fraught with dramaturgical peril. In the last weeks of rehearsal the decision was made to radically reshape the characterization of the god. Risky business late in the game. Tom Stoppard’s lines from Shakespeare in Love started repeating in my head: “ ..allow me to explain about the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.” "So what do we do?” "Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well.” “How?” "I don't know. It's a mystery.”
At that point in the process, counter-intuitive trust was pretty much all we had as we debated options and nothing seemed to satisfy. One thing had become clear - the meaning of the play might well hinge on a single moment in Act 1, Scene 4. Pentheus has been railing against the priest of Dionysus, when he suddenly stops resisting and asks to be led to the maenads. There is no stage direction, no hint from the poet of what happens to cause this change. Just a line attributed to Dionysus which consists of only the Greek letter Alpha. What was that? Does Pentheus become hypnotized? Does Dionysus cast a spell? How is the 180 shift accomplished?
Anna Farkas (our director and the actor playing Dionysus) had begun assuming Pentheus and Dionysus behaved as adversaries in their early scenes. The initial characterization, with Anna playing him a bit sly, knowing, and almost impishly spiteful, made for some snappy lines readings but it got inauthentic feeling pretty fast. Why would the king willingly capitulate to his enemy? We tried the shift moment as a spell. A cast member, watching these exchanges and thinking about the Messenger speeches summed up the impact: "Dionysus is a murderer!”
Fail! Even though the god speaks lines that sound vengeful, Euripides clearly didn’t create him as a villain. This god is a far more nuanced and provocative character - not merely a supernatural Iago. He wants revenge for his mother, but is “most gentle to men,” he sends the Theban women mad, but “it is the woman’s nature that decides her actions”. He is there to punish impiety to the gods, but tells Pentheus, “Sir, it is still possible to end this”. We couldn’t see how it added up, but decided to let the contradictory elements emerge - even without deeper understanding. At this point everyone was trying to suss out the god's motivation - the “who am I, where do I come from, and where am I going” that actors ask about their characters. “What does Dionysus want,” was a question we still had no answer for.
It all came together the other night when our visiting Greek Assistant paused the action at the penultimate Alpha and asked: “What if it isn’t imposition?”
That was an electric shock of a thought. “You mean, what if Dionysus doesn’t make the change happen? What if it’s Pentheus? What if the king’s resistance just collapses in on itself at that point?” Suddenly the narrative snapped into focus - the contradictions made sense. Dionysus isn’t a murderer, he needs worship, but he really is more like a gentle, curious presence in the first scenes with Pentheus. And the requirement that men acknowledge him is driven by human nature, not divine whim. “Whoa!” indeed.
We tried it. this time, Dionysus simply stares into the king’s eyes as Pentheus collapses from within. Greg Hudson's expression is not of one mesmerized, but suddenly aware of his own desires - a bit dazed because the words coming out of his mouth are so unlike his usual pronouncements. And as the god asks him questions, the conversion is completed. Done in this manner the effect of the moment was hair-raising. Pentheus trips his own trigger. He’s not hypnotized or put under an enforced spell. He falls into the abyss of his own hubris. The logic of events - the fact that arrogance and rigidity lead inevitably to a fall - takes over before our eyes. And the priest of Dionysus sounds the elemental letter as an “Ah,” of apprehension, recognizing that the unexpressed longings in Pentheus’ own heart and mind have come to the surface. This is why people keep coming back to Greek drama. It’s theater at its most elemental - practically a religious experience where we witness unspoken and unlooked for truths.
In the final few days, tweaks were made to the text created to fill in the lost part of the play to strengthen the effect. Dionysus reply to Agave’s accusation: "He was my child, bloody and torn when you denied me recognition of him. Was this just? You claim divinity - but what is divine?” is neither gentle nor vengeful. It is a declaration of The Way Things Are. This is the nature of human life that we have no control over and yet must come to terms with. During dress rehearsals we tried the last scene with the god in a mask. It was certainly a striking effect, but it didn’t add to revelation. At the last minute, Anna decided to bring the play full circle - it began with a match struck in the darkness. Now it would end the same way. The god who has taken the form of man becomes the story-teller. "Daemons take many forms and the gods perform unlooked for ends. What was anticipated has not come to be, and in the unexpected, the God has found a way. This is the end of our story".
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