Volume 51, Number 19 · December 2, 2004
For the Birds
By Daniel Mendelsohn
Frogs
by Aristophanes, adapted by Burt Shevelove and Nathan Lane, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and directed by Susan Stroman
at the Vivian Beaumont Theater, Lincoln Center, New York,June 22–October 10, 2004
During the harsh Balkan winter of 407–406 BC, the Athenian playwright Euripides died in his self-imposed exile in Macedonia. He was just shy of eighty, and had been presenting tragedies at the theater of Dionysus in Athens for just under half a century. In view of the ways in which he had so daringly exploded tragic convention during that time—pushing the genre in the direction of romance, showing an ever-increasing preference for happy endings, introducing 'low' and even quasi-comic elements (plebeian characters, outright parody)—it was perhaps only appropriate that the tidings of the tragedian's demise, when they were received back home in Athens, should have inspired both a moving tragic spectacle and a great comic invention.
Review, 4990 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |