Word: pentheus
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Director Thomas Babe has chosen to do the William Arrowsmith translation in modern dress, with Pentheus of Thebes looking something like a teenage Marshal Ky, and the god Dionysus a blond-haired cigarette-smoking James Dean. The first resemblance is most pointed; Babe interprets the autocratic, highly organized government of Thebes as a garrison--perhaps fascist--state, threatened by the earthly, irrational Dionysiac cult. The interpretation works in that Babe's production is exciting theatre, and in the end faithful to the original as well. Just the same there are points worth questioning...
...simple joys of a mind and body surrendered to unity with Nature?" The Dionysiac escape is a far cry from democracy, one obvious alternative to fascism. Its closeness to nature and opposition to organized civilization are, in fact, as integral components of Nazism as the military order of Pentheus. The Dionysiac cult is the ancestor of the same Wagnerian heritage that gave illegitimate birth to Hitler. For while fascism may in practice defy the wandering, uncivilized Wagnerian prototype, it derives from it nonetheless...
...land so stingily that it is time they got a comeuppance. A onetime chancellor of the University of Aberdeen, Linklater also knows his classical drama and how to make it a vehicle for his grouch. Laxdale Hall is a modern variation on Euripides' Bacchanals, in which sobersided King Pentheus is first treed, then torn apart by furious women because he has forbidden them to join in the orgies of the wine god Dionysus...
Pettigrew v. Passion. Linklater's setting is a Scottish fishing village, his characters a cross section of classes from laird to laborers. Too somnolent to worship Dionysus, too remote to be reformed by Pentheus, the villagers of Laxdale have only one wish in life-to see Parliament vote them money for a decent road over the moors. Instead, Laxdale gets a personal visit from Mr. Pettigrew, a blue-nosed Labor M.P. who regards Highland life as the epitome of insanitary sloth. He brings a shapely wife, who admires his Penthean principles but turns to lustier men for her Dionysian...
...Compare the "Birds" with some familiar modern burlesque; 5, The character of Teirisias in the "Oedipus" and in the "Bacchae;" 6, Connection between the choral odes of the "Bacchae" of Euripides and the development of the plot; 7, Compare the impiety and madness of Ajax and of Pentheus. The subjects, it will be seen, have a considerable range, and will be likely to largely increase the active interest of the members of the section in the work of the course...