The thing about this play, is that while there are moments of beauty; lyrical descriptions, statements of profound wisdom, and just plain gorgeous imagery, it is also deeply disturbing. Because along with the beauty is madness and some wrenching violence. I mean stomach turning stuff, when your body joins your head in protesting: “This is the story? Really?”
The actors playing the Bacchae women and Agave had a long talk about this one especially hot night in one of the Sunday School rooms at First Baptist where we’ve been rehearsing. It was a little bit like Sunday School actually - Sunday School in a sauna with everyone asking the big questions, taking nothing for granted and demanding answers that make sense. I think the world of these young women!
But “sense” is exactly what Euripides is not making with this play. In fact, it can be read as a guided tour into the darker mysteries where rationality has no place. Maybe that was the author’s point, and what we’re hearing in the tale of Dionysus’ vengeance and punishment of Agave and her son, is Euripides’ own chastisement of Athenian society with its premium on Apollonian reason and sunshiny logic.
Or not.
The burning question for the cast is whether they can make sense of Dionysus or appreciate his motives. One thing is certain, the response to the play hinges on how you understand justice. In Euripides’ mythos there is Pentheus’ justice and the god’s and they are very different things. And the Greek word he uses actually isn’t so much “justice" as “custom" - what you expect is right.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Chorus members seem to have no real problem with Dionysus. To a great degree actors experience a play through their characters, and because they’ve been doing grape-vines and allemandes around him (or his boots) for the past month while making cool mystical pronouncements and dramatically seething about the hubris of Pentheus, they are not dissatisfied with their god. He’s their enchantingly good looking traveling companion, their protector and inspiration - what’s not to like?
For those who serve Pentheus, it’s more complicated. Though the guards and the Messengers all pointedly notice Dionysus' grace and power, and even contradict the king’s hubristic authority, the actors can’t help but feel for the king they serve.
Poor rigid, wrong-headed king - he’s doomed by the hypocrisy and injustice he took in at Agave's knee, and the propriety he tries to hide behind. His faults are familiar though that you find yourself wanting to give him a way out. And Greg Hudson plays the flawed Pentheus with such humanity that you can’t help but identify with him.
So, the discussion continues: Can you be angry at the god (especially if it’s not in the text)? Isn’t Pentheus' fate more like a rubber-band snapping after being stretched too far? (Director’s analogy there) Are we justified in objecting when Pentheus comes to a bad end? We’re horrified at the pathos and gore but we still have to grapple with the poet’s insistence that the god is gentle and gracious.
And so, round we go.
A Pentheus/Dionysus special rehearsal brought some illumination. Greg and Anna worked Scenes 1.2 and 1.4 repeatedly. I found my sympathies taking turns:
"Wow - that king is some kind of stuck up politician."
"But, you know, that “priest” of Dionysus is insufferably insolent.." 
First I thought that maybe the poet wants us to feel the disconnect - to recognize that insincerity is a slippery slope but that we object to the powers-that-be greasing the skids. Then, later the conversation turned to Andre Gregory’s 1969 production at Yale. Set in a structure that looked like the skeleton of an airplane fuselage, the stage was meant to represent both his palace and the inside of Pentheus' head.
To a great degree, our perception of what’s going on comes from Pentheus. He is the one that finds Dionysus insufferable and who won’t allow for any custom but his own. From within that most un-open mind, the god appears horrific. We’ll go back tonight and try letting Euripides have his say: playing the warnings and admonitions as the god’s attempts at education; actually gentle and gracious...
The end of the Chorus discussion on Friday came down from the metaphysical heights to planning the stage mechanics of the recognition scene: how much stage blood to bathe Agave in. Pentheus' head in a bag or on a spike? Do we do a plaster cast of Greg’s face? Do we put blood in Agave’s hair? Yes! How about Pentheus bloody handprint on her cheek? Yes again!
But you must not think that we are bloodthirsty - just a tad caught up in the revels!
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