This afternoon I watched the live-streamed Epidaurus production of the Persians (472 BCE!). Thanks to seneca for the tip-off! I thought it was magnificent in every way.
Especially interesting I thought were the reactions of the audience, presumably nearly all Greek. (The production must be disappointed to have been deprived of the Americans it had clearly hoped for originally.) Early on, egged on by the production itself (one particular verse emphasized and repeated), they cheered the references to Athenian freedom and democracy, but empathy with the Persians seemed to kick in around the end of the first main chorus, about halfway through the play (592ff., λέλυται γὰρ | λαὸς ελεύθερα βάζειν etc.), which was not cheered despite the opportunity provided. Consistently with this but rather oddly, by the end of the play, Xerxes’ pleas for sympathetic response from the chorus meet with pointed silence from them, perhaps the director’s decision.
Incidentally, the cultural anomaly of the Persians’ reference to themselves as barbaroi (faithful to Aeschylus’ text), in accordance with habitual Greek usage, struck me more forcefully than previously, a strong reminder that this is a Greek play. The disconnect between this Athenian play and the Persian perspective it adopts is enormously powerful.
The play’s relevance to contemporary US politics came shining through. But I’d better not say more about that in case Joel silences me.
It’s probably futile to hope that many of the audience and actors will not now be hit by the corona virus, which has only just begun to afflict Greece. Hardly anyone was wearing a mask, and there was no distancing. (At the very end as the audience left there was a presumably last-minute plea to “wear your mask,” but there were almost no masks in evidence.)
A few random notes on the production while it’s fresh in my mind.
It was jarring to have Darius walk down stairs from above instead of up from the underworld as he should be imagined as doing. Perhaps this was modeled on divine ex machina epiphanies, and of course a Greek stage has no trap doors!
Various liberties taken with the text. The chorus’ strophic pair at 694~701 was cut out, sacrificing a dramatically effective intervention in the original. At least metrical responsions were respected, though sometimes unbalanced. More cuts later, apparently in the interests of streamlining a single character’s continuity.
Delivery excellent. Very effective pause at εγω 779.
People make too much of hubris in tragedy, but here it is in the text (821). Quite Herodotean.
I could have done without the birthday cake Parthenon.
Wise words for us all from Dareius: χαίρετ’ ἐν κακοῖς ὅμως
ψυχῇ διδόντες ἡδονὴν καθ’ημέραν,
ὡς τοῖς θανοῦσι πλοῦτος οὐδὲν ὠφελεῖ.