Volume 49, Number 5 · March 28, 2002
When Not in Greece
By Daniel Mendelsohn
Iphigeneia at Aulis
by Euripides, directed by Shepard Sobel
The Pearl Theatre Company, New York, November 19–December 16, 2001
Oedipus Rex
by Sophocles, directed and designed by Tadashi Suzuki
The Japan Society, New York, November 1–3, 2001
'Nothing to do with Dionysos!' So went the proverbial Athenian complaint about tragedy. And no wonder: after all, the annual theatrical productions at Athens—with their brilliant costumes and special effects, the rich musical accompaniment and complex choreography, the poetically sophisticated and intellectually provocative libretti, the keenly watched competitions for playwrights—seemed to have very little indeed to do with the quaint rural shindig in honor of the wine god Dionysos from which, if we are to believe Aristotle, Greek theater evolved. For tragedy (as he asserts in the Poetics) got its humble start as a festive choral song called the dithyramb, sung in celebration of the god's birth; while comedy owed its origins to a genre that clearly had something to do with Dionysos' role as a fertility deity, as we may infer from its rather louche name ('phallic songs').
Review, 4402 words
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