Tragically Misinformed

Greek tragedy still speaks to us because it deals with basic human themes. Directors and critics, however, often want to add a layer of modernity to these pieces, believing they have to "improve" them to make them relevant. Sometimes this adds something, sometimes it takes something away.

I haven't seen the Joanne Akalaitis production of Euripides' The Bacchae, but I have problems with Marilyn Stasio's review in Variety. She has trouble with the casting of Dionysus.

Since helmer Akalaitis obviously intended the amoral god of licentiousness to be portrayed as a petulant youth with curly locks and torn jeans, it might be argued that [Jonathan] Groff ("Spring Awakening," "Hair") is only doing his job. But even in this context, he doesn't muster the ferocious anger Dionysus turns on the leaders of Thebes for rejecting his claims to divinity and banning his dangerous new religion. Nor is he particularly believable as an Olympian stud capable of driving masses of women into a state of violent sexual frenzy just by breathing into his microphone.

But that's the whole point. Dionysus is not one of those old gods that Pentheus might respect. He's this new guy, with a new style--almost epicene--who comes on the scene and demands, shockingly, that everyone worship him. He's supposed to seem out of place. If he seems scary and ferocious, as you'd expect, then it's not as big a deal. (In fact, this is a theatrical trick that Euripides used over and over. Look at how sympathetic he makes Medea before she starts doing horrible things.)

As for driving women into a sexual frenzy, how many times in the 20th century (and earlier) did some new force appear (Rudolph Valentino, The Beatles, Leonardo DiCaprio) who drove women crazy and had the establishment shaking their heads at how wimpy these new sex symbols are?

Stasio also has her reading of Agave:

As the cursed Agave, Joan MacIntosh singlehandedly delivers Euripides' other significant theme in this tragedy -- the terrible consequences when women are consistently thwarted from pursuing their natural skills and ambitions. MacIntosh gives a luminous portrayal of Agave expressing her pride and joy at succeeding in the masculine role of a hunter, the height of her exaltation making it all the more tragic when Agave comes to her senses and realizes she has killed her own son.

I suppose the play could support this reading if you insist, but Agave killing her son is horrifying, and it's a bit of a stretch to say we were supposed to be happy about her successful hunting up to that point. A better reading might be this shows how we should be wary of the powers the gods can unleash, as well as the dangers women represent if they're not properly controlled.