SOPHOCLES MADE NEW: MODERN PERFORMANCES

Marianne McDonald

Sophocles specializes in heroism. His heroes will stand up for what they believe even if it costs their lives. This has made him a particular favourite of modern audiences. He was also popular in his own time. Tracking later productions is therefore an adventure in understanding modern cultures as well as that of ancient Greece.1 Performances began in Athens in 534bc with Thespis, and in the  fth century they were given at dramatic festivals. The more popular plays were often revived in the following century. During these revivals they were vulnerable to adaptation and additions by actors and producers. After the Athenian Academy was closed in 529ad, classical texts and performance disappeared from sight for several centuries and did not re-emerge until the revival of learning in the early Byzantine period. Greek tragedy became known in the West mainly through Latin transla- tions, and often via Seneca (ca. 4bc–65ad). It is debatable whether Seneca’s dramas were ever actually performed in his lifetime. They always feature violence onstage, something that replicated the Rome of his time (he suf- fered under Nero’s excesses and was  nally forced by him to commit sui- cide). The ancient Greeks did not relish this violence on their stage. This chapter will not list all modern productions; rather, a few will be selected as representative. A modern playwright should remember that the recent play is often compared with the original ancient play, and in many cases such comparisons show the modern version falling short. The ancient playwrights not only had profound themes, which remain relevant, but they were also poets. In modern times I  nd the poets often miss the drama, and dramatic playwrights often miss the poetry. Modern versions on political themes often demonize one side and lose the rich ambiguity of the Greek originals. Productions ought to be faithful to the text, but accessible to

1 In the course of writing this essay, I have consulted the following: Kirkwood (1958); Kitto (1958); Knox (1964); Long (1968); Webster (19692); Reinhardt (1979); Walton (1980), (1987a), (19962), (2006a); Winnington-Ingram (1980); Stanford (1983); Blundell (1989a); McDonald (1992), (2001), (2003); Wiles (2000); Hall/Macintosh (2005). 642 marianne mcdonald audiences. If they are versions, they should succeed on their own merits. Masks rarely work in the modern West, because actors are not trained to use them as they do in Asia, or as they were in antiquity. They also do not seem to suit the intimate theatre of the West. Too much technology can ruin a production, and is best left to the cinema. This will be my tentative chronological order, except that, for organi- zational purposes, I follow productions of Oedipus Tyrannus with those of Oedipus at Colonus: Antigone 443 or 441bc Ajax ca. 442bc Trachiniae ca. 432bc Oedipus Tyrannus ca. 427bc Oedipus at Colonus 401bc (posthumous) Electra ca. 413bc Philoctetes 409bc Films based on these plays will not be mentioned here, given space limita- tions. Sophocles has probably shown us in Antigone the  rst civil rights resistor in dramatic history: ‘… I didn’t think that any edict issued by you, Creon, had the power to override the unwritten and unfailing law of the gods’.2 Antigone was very popular in the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. It has often been performed during political unrest. In 1804 Friedrich Hölderlin’s translation Antigonae coupled  delity to the original with poetic air. In 1898 Antigone was  rst performed in Russia at the Moscow Art The- atre in a translation by Dimitri Merezhkovsky. There was an attempt to preserve the ancient ritual and ceremony. At the same time there was an attempt at realism, and psychological  delity to the characters as had been developed in the theatre of Chekhov. There is an obvious clash in these two approaches, but this marked an experimental advance in Russian theatre. No curtain separated the stage from the audience. There was an altar on the set with a ame burning on it throughout the performance. The young V. Meyerhold appeared as Tiresias, and in later life he based his perfor- mances on classical Greek theatre. A French version of Antigone was produced by Jean Cocteau in 1922 with sets by Picasso, music by Arthur Honegger and costumes by Chanel. In general, Cocteau abbreviated Sophocles’ splendid text, and efectively

2 All translations are my own, unless indicated.