Word: aeschylus
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...drama and stop trying to sound like an unearthly shaman or the Delphic priestess, their speech becomes intelligible, and they show us "just how modern the old bard really was." At least I think their interpretation follows certain simple but "classic" lines: Euripides mocks the old religious motifs that Aeschylus so deeply felt, ergo he was an atheist rebelling against the pious establishment. The Loeb production seems to follow this interpretation or, shall I say, to adopt it suddenly and without warning near the end of the play when the speech of the Dioscuroi and one reference to prayer...
These directors have actors of their own caliber to work with. Almost every voice meets the stiff test of Aeschylus' verse as translated by Richmond Lattimore. And not content with giving us the lush lines, they have given us memorable characters. No one who was in Sanders Theatre last night will ever forget Joan Tolentino's Clytemnestra. "A woman merely," she describes herself, yet she dominates the stage. She outfaces Agamemnon; she towers over Aegisthus (and the directors emphasize this by placing her a level above him on the stage as she snaps down the Argive elders...
Unlike the Oresteia of Aeschylus, in which Orestes heroically kills Clytemnestra to restore order, Orestes' matricide is set in a context where formal (although hollow) legality prevails. Orestes is at first sympathetic and wounded with guilt; in the course of the play his criminal nature is revealed. Euripides mocks the heroic ideal by showing Orestes' depravity and the depravity of those around...
...German film version of Goethe's Faust shown at the Loeb Theatre; for he had waged an ardent campaign to stimulate a fully staged production of this classic in Harvard's new playhouse. It is also fitting that his editorial appearing the day he was stricken dealt with Aeschylus' Oresteia; for it was occasioned by the forthcoming Adams House production, and concerned the work he loved most in the world...
...dirt-poor western Sicily, few peasants can read, even fewer can afford to buy a book. So what was anyone talking about in Roccamena last week? Shakespeare, Brecht, Dante, Aeschylus, to name a few of the poets and playwrights whose works were featured in the town's first informal festival of the performing arts. Star performer was Movie Idol Vittorio Gassman, who for two straight nights strode a sidewalk "stage" illumined by car headlights while declaiming passages from Julius Caesar, The Divine Comedy and other works. Whatever they made of it, the Roccamenensi were an appreciative audience...