Word: pentheus
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...first step is to transform the impious into raving maniacs. The Theban women have already become blood-thirsty maenads at the start of the play; Pentheus (John Claflin), the proud young king of Thebes, is gradually given a taste for women's clothing as well as for self-destruction...
Only Lisa Lindley, as Pentheus' mother Agave, conveys a compelling sense of this worldgone-bad. As leader of the maenads, she is a portrait of frenzy. Blood-splattered and hysterical with glee from killing a wild animal with her bare hands, Lindley's Agave touches upon the horror of Euripide's play...
While that hardbought insight illuminates the current production at Manhattan's Circle in the Square Theater, the clash of wills between King Pentheus of Thebes and the god Dionysus is somewhat muffled, despite Michael Cacoyannis' incisive direction and his crisply idiomatic translation. John Noah Hertzler's Pentheus is less a king than a kinglet, a petty tyro tyrant, and Christopher Rich's Dionysus is no god but a godlet, a prancing posturer devoid of awe, might and mystery...
...self-righteous Pentheus denies that Dionysus is the son of Zeus and vows to wipe out his followers in Thebes. Dionysus appears incognito, and a chorus of Asian-women converts hymn the beatific peace of serving the god of joy. Pentheus claps Dionysus in irons. The god miraculously escapes. Despite the politic advice of his sage grandfather Cadmus (Philip Bosco), the blind seer Tiresias (Tom Klunis) and Dionysus' chillingly prophetic warnings, Pentheus speeds to his appointed doom...
Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad. Spying in women's garb at the forest rites of the maenads, Pentheus is beheaded by his own mother Agave (Irene Papas), who, crazed by Dionysus, takes her son for a lion...