Things read and seen in 2021, #5

 (Spoilers. * indicates something watched/read for the first time.) 

Movies

47. The Viking Queen (UK, dir. Don Chaffey, scr. Clarke Reynolds, starring Don Murray and Carita, Hammer/Seven Arts, 1967)

A rewatch because I had a guest spot talking about this movie on Paul Cornell and Lisbeth Myles' Hammer House of Podcast, and, eventually, this movie will feature in my book on Roman Britain on screen. I'm afraid I don't like this movie very much. It's part of Hammer's 1960s flirtation with the epic, that they get into just about the time the bottom falls out of the ancient epic market, and they don't really have the money to do it justice. Don Chaffey, who directed Jason and the Argonauts, does what he's supposed to do; but it needs a better script, and a better cast. Liz Myles liked it, however.

48. 300: Rise of an Empire (USA, dir. Noam Murro, scr. Zack Snyder & Kurt Johnstad, starring Sullivan Stapleton, Eva Green, Lena Headey, Hans Matheson, and Rodrigo Santoro, Legendary Pictures/Cruel and Unusual Films/Atmosphere Pictures/Hollywood Gang Productions, 2014)

To be fair to The Viking Queen, it is at least a better movie than this. A #ClassicsTwitterMovie, of course; my Twitter thread is here. Everything that you didn't like about 300 is repeated in this movie, whilst pretty much everything you did like is gone. It's nice that Lena Headey gets a bit more to do, though the movie has to reset her personality for plot purposes. Eva Green does the Eva Green bit of being a mean woman and flashing her boobs (and, of course, has to be motivated by sexual violence in the past, because no other motivation for mean women is allowed), whilst the movie entirely fails to make a star out of Sullivan Stapleton. Absurdity piles on absurdity, with seas that look like they have come out of The Perfect Storm, an oil tanker, and cavalry concealed in the bowels of the Athenian ships. 

49. Antigone (Greece, dir. & scr. George Tzavellas, starring Irene Papas, Norma Film Productions, 1961) *

Another #ClassicsTwitterMovie. My own Twitter commentary was minimal, as I hadn't seen this movie before. It is something I had always meant to get round to, as I wanted to see how Tzavellas handled Greek tragedy, as compared to how Michael Cacoyannis handled it. The prologue is good. Tzavellas very much plays the text as one woman standing up for what is right against an oppressive régime (in the original Athenian context, it's more complex than that, but this is how most modern treatments take the play). Papas is excellent in the central role. But overall, it feels very studio-bound; there are external shots, but they don't exploit the locations very much. The net result is rather stagey, and, I feel, perhaps a bit too respectful towards the text; it's as if Tzavellas knows that he is dealing with an important part of Greek heritage, and as a result, the play doesn't really feel alive. Also, Tzavellas is not as good a director as Cacoyannis.  

50. Electra (Greece, dir. and scr. Michael Cacoyannis, starring Irene Papas, Finos Film, 1962)

Another #ClassicsTwitterMovie. My Twitter thread is here. Just less than a year passed between the release of Antigone and the release of this, yet they are vastly different movies, and Papas' performance in this is very much more advanced. In Antigone, she's excellent; here she's extraordinary. The movie is cinematic in a way that Tzavellas' Antigone just isn't. As it happens, Electra is probably my least favourite of Cacoyannis' Euripidean trilogy; but that doesn't mean it is in any way a bad movie. Far from it.  

51. Star Wars, Episode II: Attack of the Clones (USA, dir. George Lucas, scr. George Lucas and Jonathan Hales, starring Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Hayden Christensen, Ian McDiarmid, Samuel L. Jackson, and Christopher Lee, Lucasfilm/20th Century Fox, 2002)

I put this on the syllabus for my course on Classics and science fiction. I chose this episode because it's the one that you can say most interesting things about Classical reception in, as you get the Roman-derived politics, and Naboo which looks like medieval Rome, and an amphitheatre scene. This does not mean that I rate it particularly highly. Lucas should really have remembered that he was better as a producer and story creator than as a director or screenwriter. And Hayden Christensen's Anakin Skywalker is just whiny all the time, giving little indication how he might eventually become Darth Vader, and indeed, why Portman's Padme Amidala should fall for him.

52. The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard (USA, dir. Patrick Hughes, scr. Tom O' Connor & Brandon Murphy & Philip Murphy, starring Ryan Reynolds, Samuel L. Jackson, Salma Hayek, Antonio Banderas, and Morgan Freeman, Millennium Media/Nu Boyana Film Studios/Campbell Grobman Films/Film i Väst/FilmGate Films, 2021) *

You may recall my enthusing about The Hitman's Bodyguard earlier in the year, and saying that the only thing really wrong with it was that there wasn't enough Salma Hayek. This certainly corrects that, but overall, we're into the law of diminishing returns. Certainly, there are some good funny bits, but they're a lot fewer and further apart than in the previous movie. The script doesn't really have anything new to do with the relationship between Reynolds and Jackson's characters, and so it hits the reset button, so that things that were settled between them, such as gaining a certain amount of mutual respect, have to be gone through again. Still, if you ever wanted to know how Antonio Banderas would play a Bond villain, this is the movie to watch.

53. Black Widow (USA, dir. Cate Shortland, scr. Eric Pearson, starring Scarlett Johansson, Florence Pugh, David Harbour, O-T Fagbenle, Ray Winstone, and Rachel Weisz, Marvel Studios, 2021)

At last, the pandemic-delayed Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe gets underway, though actually, given that it is set before Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame, this feels more like unfinished business from Phase 3. I wrote a review of this for FA Online, and don't really have much more to add here. There's nothing particularly wrong with this movie, and it is nice to see Johansson in action as Natasha one last time, but Black Widow didn't excite me as much as I was hoping it might. Also, I am extremely disappointed that the movie does not use Pulp's 'I Spy' over the closing credits, which, is in my head, Natasha's theme song. Having predicted that we'd get Yelena Belova and the Red Guardian, and that the story would take the Black Widow to her Russian roots, I was hoping for three-for-three. (Both these movies were seen at Nightflix, where the screen was a bit dark, so that may have affected my enjoyment of them.)

54. Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw (USA, dir. David Leitch, scr. Chris Morgan and Drew Pearce, starring Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham, Universal, 2019) *

My pick for virtual film club. I wanted to watch this because I liked the trailer, and it is a movie that links in with my interests in London and the fantastic, as this is very clearly a science fictional plot. In fact, it's a superhero plot, with Idris Elba's Brixton Lore (no, really) being constantly described as 'the black Superman' (he's actually the black Captain America). I enjoyed this, despite never having watched a Fast and Furious movie before, so not having any of the backstory. Johnson and Statham are likeable leads (apparently Statham's character was once a nasty villain, but has been redeemed), and there's plenty of over-the-top action. It's nice that Vanessa Kirby's character gets quite a bit of agency, and isn't just a love interest for Johnson. And Ryan Reynolds plays pretty much the same character as he plays in Hitman's Bodyguard.

55. Dredd (UK/South Africa, dir. Pete Travis, scr. Alex Garland, starring Karl Urban, Entertainment Film Distributors/Reliance Entertainment/IM Global/DNA Films, 2012) *

I happened to mention to John Coxon that I'd never seen Dredd; he told me I must watch it immediately, so I did. Back in 1995 I went to see the Judge Dredd movie that starred Sylvester Stallone. I wrote a review with got published in an apazine, and which I can't lay my hands on at the moment, but I think I said it was the perfect Judge Dredd movie for the first five minutes, up to the moment that Stallone takes the helmet off, and then it just all falls apart. Thank heavens then, for Karl Urban, who here appears very briefly with the helmet off at the beginning, but with his face in shadow, and is then happy to remain in full Dredd uniform throughout. Alex Garland takes a relatively low-key storyline, of Dredd and Cassandra Anderson (Olivia Thirlby) trying to stay alive in a block, rather than the big corruption plot of the 1995 movie, and Dredd is all the better for that. It's not perfect; the black humour that characterises the comic strip at its best is largely missing. Mega-City One also looks shabbier than one might expect, though that probably works in the movie's favour. Dredd is better in just about every respect than the Stallone movie; the only point where the earlier movie is superior is in the design of the Lawmaster bikes, which seem more like those of the comics in 1995.

Television

7. Star Trek, season 1 (US, TV, created by Gene Roddenberry, starring William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, Desilu/Paramount, 1966–1967)

I embarked on a rewatch of Star Trek, beginning with The Original Series, which I watched in production order, rather than broadcast order. That rewatch has rather ground to a halt of late, but I did get to the end of season 1. Watching it in production order means that I got to see that Uhura began in a gold uniform. And watching the episodes close together meant that I noticed things like Kirk being presented as quite an erudite man, not just a man of action; that Spock isn't half as emotionless as he likes to pretend; that Uhura keeps being given things to do; and that, for all that Next Generation got criticised for everyone having meetings all the time, there are a lot of meetings held on the old Enterprise.

Books

5. adrienne marie brown, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2017) *

Read for the August meeting of the London Science Fiction Research Community. It's a collection of essays and thoughts relating to ways of trying to save the world. I like very much that these ways are inspired by science fiction (amb looks to both Star Trek and Octavia Butler). It's also worth noting that she is primarily an optimist about this, and we need a bit of optimism when the world around us is burning, and western governments still don't seem interested in taking the drastic action that is becoming ever-more imperative. On the other hand, the book is a little on the bitty side, as is probably inevitable given the many different origins of the pieces that go towards the final book. I feel perhaps that a bit more structure might have made it more effective. I also feel it's not for me as much as it is for people from marginalised communities. Nevertheless, I suspect I shall be coming back to this one. 

Virtual theatre

12. From the Machine, King's College London, 2021 *

This year's King's Greek Play, written and performed by a cast of KCL students, supervised by David Bullen, Edith Hall, and Nicola Hewitt-George. This production had, as with everything else, to accommodate itself to the COVID pandemic. The solutions taken were very similar to those used by the Oxford Orestes I talked about in a previous post; cast members performed from their offices and bedrooms, giving a claustrophobic feel. There was a crossover in subject matter with Orestes as well; From the Machine combines elements of several Greek plays, many of them set around the end of the Trojan War and its immediate aftermath. So it includes Orestes and Electra's murder of Clytemnestra and their attempted murder of Helen. Unfortunately, after Orestes, From the Machine doesn't feel as innovative as it might have been, and as with the Oxford play, I found it hard to engage. Anactoria Clarke was excellent, however, as an older Helen.

13. The Frogs, by Aristophanes, directed by Argyro Chioti, Athens Epidaurus Festival, 2021 *

Once again the main play of the Epidaurus festival was screened for free. I'd missed last year's Persians, but managed to catch this. I enjoyed it a lot, and had a big grin on my face. It's unusual for a play in a foreign language, that I'm very familiar with, and which makes few concessions to updating the jokes, to get a laugh out of me. But this did, consistently.

14. La traviata, by Giuseppe Verdi, Glyndebourne. directed by Tom Cairns, conducted by Mark Elder, starring Venera Gimadieva and Michael Fabiano, 2014 *

Virtual theatre club pick, because it's available for free through August. I'm not particularly an opera buff, so not only had I not seen this production of La traviata, I'd never seen any production, though I did recognise a couple of tunes. (My mother was a Verdi fan, though her favourite was Aida.) I enjoyed this. I mean, it all ends tragically, of course, but then it wouldn't really be opera if it didn't. Gimadieva is particularly good in the lead role, both as a singer and as an actress.

Things read and seen in 2021, #3

(Spoilers. * indicates something watched/read for the first time.)

Movies

16. La caduta di Troia (The Fall of Troy) (Italy, dir. Giovanni Pastrone and Luigi Romano Borgnetto, scr. Giovanni Pastrone, starring Luigi Romano Borgnetto, Giovanni Casaleggio, and Madame Davesnes, Itala Film, 1911)

A short, sometimes, as this poster shows, known as L'assedio e la caduta di Troia (The Siege and Fall of Troy). Rewatched as research for my Historical Fictions Research Network paper, back in February. It's an interesting treatment. Some of the tropes of modern adaptations are fully in place here, e.g. it tells the whole story of the war, not just the events of Homer's Iliad (in fact, the Iliad doesn't get a look in), and eclecticism runs riot in the design, drawing upon Classical Greece for the Spartan place, but with a very Roman garden, and Egyptian slaves, whilst Troy itself is full of Greek, Persian, Assyrian and Roman elements. On the other hand, this is still treated as mythology, with an active role for Venus in the eloping of Paris and Helen, and no better reason is given for the war beyond the insult to Menelaus dealt by Paris when he ran off with the Spartan King's wife. Classical Receptions Bingo Card: Of course.

17. The Dig (UK, dir. Simon Stone, scr. Moira Buffini, starring Carey Mulligan and Ralph Fiennes, Magnolia Mae Films/Clerkenwell Films, 2021) *

I have joined a virtual film night group of friends, and this is the first movie I watched with them. Not surprisingly, this, the tale of the excavation of the Anglo-Saxon ship butial at Sutton Hoo, as the clouds of war gathered, was a movie I wanted to see ever since I became aware of it (which admittedly wasn't that long ago). The Anglo-Saxons are after my period (nasty modern rubbish), but I've done a fair bit of archaeological fieldwork in my time, and I think that this movie gives you some idea of how hard the physical work of excavating an archaeological site can be when you haven't got mechanical diggers to do the difficult and boring bits. Of course, there's a great deal of artistic license in the production of the movie, falling into all-too-predictable patterns (the 'professional' archaeologists all look down on the 'amateur' Basil Brown). I'm okay with most of the license, but I wish it hadn't been necessary to denigrate Peggy Piggott; she is depicted as someone with little experience, who has married an older and more experienced man (it is implied, and I believe made explicit in the original novel by John Preston, that she is a student who has married her tutor). In reality, Peggy Piggott had been digging for six years by the time she turned up at Sutton Hoo, had begin her career working for Mortimer and Tessa Wheeler at Verulamium, and had met Stuart Piggott when they were both students at the University of London, and both in their late twenties. She had more paper qualifications in Archaelogy than her husband did, and had directed her own dig. In a movie that aims at raising up to public attention the work of an archaeologist who, the movie suggests, was overlooked because he was working class, it is a shame that a woman's contribution is downplayed like this. Still, The Dig looks very pretty, and the performances are good. Carey Mulligan does very well playing someone twenty years older than her; though one does wonder, given that there are precious few cinema roles for women over 40, was it necessary to give one of them to an under-40? Despite all my reservations, I nevertheless do recommend this. Classical Receptions Bingo Card: The Ipswich archaeologists are desperate to get Basil Brown to come dig on a Roman villa.

18. Jason and the Argonauts (USA/UK, dir. Don Chaffey, scr. Jan Read & Beverley Cross, starring Todd Armstrong and Nancy Kovack, Morningside Productions/Columbia Pictures, 1963)

A #ClassicsTwitterMovie that is also in my Ancient Greece and Rome on the Big Screen course. My Twitter thread is here. I've been writing a lot about this movie over the last few days, for my course, and for an LGBT+ History Month event I did on 23 February. What can more one say here? I have seen this time and time again, and it never gets dull. Certainly Ray Harryhausen's best movie, one of the best movies based on ancient Greece from the great days of the Hollywood epic, and arguably one of the best movies of Greek mythology ever made. Talos is one of Harryhausen's most memorable characters, and I really like that Harryhausen has the courage to delay his first bit of Dynamation to 30 minutes into the movie. Apart from that, there's just loads to enjoy. And it's great to see so many British character actors involved; Nigel Green, Laurence Naismith, Patrick Troughton, Niall MacGinnis, Douglas Wilmer, and that's just for starters. This is the second movie Harryhausen made after moving to London (though he was still under contract to a Hollywood studio), and that really shows through in the casting. Classical Receptions Bingo Card: House! 

19. Early Man (UK, dir. Nick Park, scr. Mark Burton and James Higginson, starring the voices of Eddie Redmayne, Tom Hiddlestone, Maisie Williams, and Timothy Spall, Aardman Animations/BFI, 2018)

Another virtual film group movie; my pick, in fact. This rather seems to have flown under a lot of people's radars. I remember seeing it in a largely empty cinema, and the movie barely made its money back. I guess the lack of sheep, chickens or cheese-obsessed Yorkshiremen meant it didn't appeal to the wide audience Aardman can usually expect. Which is a shame, because it's really rather excellent. Funny throughout, if you can forgive some extreme punning, and also quite sweet. Tom Hiddleston is almost unrecognisable, and clearly having an enormous amount of fun voicing villain Lord Nooth with an outrageous French accent (please read that in an outrageous French accent). And I love the joke about the dinosaurs called 'Ray' and 'Harry'. Well worth following up, if you haven't seen it. Classical Receptions Bingo Card: the Bronze Age looks remarkably like ancient Rome, with some references to Greece thrown in. 

20. The 300 Spartans (USA, dir. Rudolph Maté, scr. George St. George, starring Richard Egan, Ralph Richardson, Diane Baker, Barry Coe, and David Farrar, 20th Century Fox, 1962)

Another #ClassicsTwitterMovie, in case you couldn't guess. The thread starts here. I'm not wholly sure whether I think 300 Spartans is a good movie. I think it's better than 300; it's certainly less racist and dehumanises the Persians far less, even if it doesn't quite have the style of 300's imagery. It's also probably the best movie from the 1950s and 1960s set in ancient Greece, but then there's not a lot of competition, since so few were made. It's definitely not a better movie than the likes of Ben-Hur or Spartacus. Its reconstruction of the Battle of Thermopylae is more accurate than that of 300, but again, that's not saying much. Ralph Richardson brings some much needed gravitas to the movie, but he doesn't wholly give the impression that he's taking it seriously. Richard Egan, on the other hand, is taking things Very Seriously, in the way that William Shatner would later make his own. My favourite moment remains where somebody who is Greek turns to someone else who is presumably Greek, and explains what a Greek phrase means. Classical Receptions Bingo Card: molon lave.

21. Le mépris (Contempt) (France, dir. & scr. Jean-Luc Godard, starring Brigitte Bardot, Rome Paris Films/Les Films Concordia/Compagnia Cinematografica Champion, 1963)

And once again, we are with #ClassicsTwitterMovie. My Twitter thread is here. What a delight it is to watch again this wonderful movie, and to bring it to a new audience. It looks and sounds beautiful, thanks to vibrant colours from cinematographer Raoul Coutard, and the lush strings of Georges Delerue's score. It's my favourite adaptation of the Odyssey (yes, over O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and that is also a movie I love), and probably my favourite adaptation of Homer. I need to watch À bout de souffle and Alphaville again to decide if this is my favourite Godard. Godard is extremely playful throughout this, keeping a minimum of jump-cuts, so the narrative isn't hard to follow, and subverting Bardot's image as a sex kitten, whether through utterly gratuitous shots of her lying naked on thick rugs, or dressing her up to look like Anna Karina (Godard's then wife). Jack Palance is also excellent as the sleazy and violent American producer. If you've never seen this movie, do yourself a favour and correct that. Classical Receptions Bingo Card: Jack Palance trying to seduce Bardot by showing her a book of Roman erotica.

22. Troy: The Odyssey (USA, dir. Tekin Girgin, scr. Eric Forsberg, starring Dylan Vox, Lara Heller, Hachem Hicham, David W. Grey, Kelly B. Jones, and Daniel Whyte, The Asylum, 2017) *

I watched this as preparation for my class on versions of the Odyssey. Oh my. I confess to not being terribly familiar with the product of The Asylum before now, having slogged through ten minutes of Hercules Reborn (2014) before finding something better to do with my time, and I have never seen Sharknado. This is essentially a version of the Odyssey that seeks to cash in on Wolfgang Petersen's Troy a mere thirteen years after the Hollywood movie's release. The story appears to be constructed by chopping up Homer and throwing all the bits up in the air, and then adding a few extra bits. There's a Sword of Troy, which Odysseus seems to have go hold of, and is a full-on magic sword. There's a Kraken, because if your knowledge of Greek mythology is entirely based on movies, you probably think that's a Greek beast. There's fighting female Chinese monks guarding Troy, because ... no I can't explain that. Agamemnon, who appears to be a particularly angry Aussie Rules football player, is married to Helen. After Troy is stormed by about a half-dozen Greek soldiers, who vaguely tap at Trojan opponents with spears, in the background while the main cast are doing fight scenes, Odysseus heads home on what would be generously described as an overgrown dinghy. Fortunately, there are only three other Ithacans going home with him, which means there is space to give a lift to the Trojan priestess Circe (I am not making this up!), who decides Odysseus is a good bloke and worth fighting for, for no very good reason. There's Sirens! Who are the same as Calypso! There's a Minotaur in the Paths of the Dead. There's a Cyclops at the other side of the Paths of the Dead. Eventually Odysseus gets home, kills the Suitor and reunites with Penelope, only to have to fight off the Kraken! (I bet you'd forgotten about the Kraken. Odysseus certainly had.) Amazingly, this is not as bad as you might expect it to be. Which is still pretty bad. Classical Receptions Bingo Card: Norse! The Kraken is Norse!

23. Colossal (Canada/USA/Spain/South Korea, dir. and scr. Nacho Vigalondo, starring Anne Hathaway and Jason Sudeikis, Colossal Movie Productions, 2016) *

Another virtual film night movie. A weird one here. Colossal is billed on websites as a 'comedy' or a 'black comedy'. It is nothing of the sort. There are no real laughs anywhere in this movie, and it isn't really trying for them. It plays with romcom tropes early on, but halfway through reveals that actually it's a stalker movie. Or at least, that's one of the genres it is trying to bring together; the other is the classic Japanese monster movie (though for geographic reasons in this case, the monster is in Korea, not Japan). The central premise is intriguing, and there's a good central performance here by Anne Hathaway, who certainly gets more to do than usual. But for most of the time, the attempt to blend the two genres never quite works for me, until the very end, which is clever and satisfying, and almost makes up for the weakness of the rest of the movie. It doesn't help that all the men in her life are horrible, and can't respect boundaries, even the one who's meant to be the 'nice' one. So I'm not sure I could honestly recommend this to anyone. Classical Receptions Bingo Card: Colossus of Rhodes, innit?

24. Medea (Italy/France/Germany, dir. & scr. Pier Paolo Pasolini, starring Maria Callas, San Marco/Les Films Number One/Janus Film und Fernsehen, 1969)

Another movie for my Ancient Greece and Rome on the Big Screen course, and another #ClassicsTwitterMovie. My Twitter thread is here (due to the US shift over to Daylight Savings Time, I was an hour late to the viewing). I've watched this movie many times, and I'm still not quite sure what I think about it. Which is, I think, Pasolini's intention; he really doesn't want you to have any easy answers here. I use this as my example of Athenian tragedy rendered on screen, though really, only the last half of the movie presents Euripides' play, and in a somewhat truncated form (no room, for instance, for the visit of the Athenian king Aegeus). I actually prefer Michael Cacoyannis' three films of Euripides, but they're difficult to set in a course, as they are not easily got hold of. Nevertheless, this makes a nice companion piece to the portrayal of Medea in Jason and the Argonauts. Classical Receptions Bingo Card: We are not Team Jason here.

25. Mortal Engines (USA/New Zealand/Japan, dir. Christian Rivers, scr. Fran Walsh & Philippa Boyens & Peter Jackson, starring Hera Hilmar, Robert Sheehan, Hugo Weaving, Jihae, Ronan Raftery, Leila George, Patrick Malahide, and Stephen Lang, Universal/MRC/Wingnut Films, 2018) *

Another virtual film night, and another movie I'd been long meaning to get round to, because of my interest in London and the fantastic. It's been a while since I read Phillip Reeve's novel (and, of course, it's the only one in the series I can't find at the moment), and I don't remember it that clearly. Insofar as I do, this movie seems to treat it with respect, and preserves the main beats of the novel, though I remember that Hester and Tom don't get together until later in the series, and Katherine Valentine dies. I also seem to remember that the buzz around this movie from people I knew was that it was okay, if you didn't go in expecting the book. With this I concur. This movie was mauled by the critics, and flopped at the box office, but it's really not that bad, and the Traction Cities are well-envisaged. Reeve himself likes it. Classical Receptions Bingo Card: The deadly super-weapon is called the MEDUSA.    

26. Chi-Raq (USA, dir. Spike Lee, scr. Kevin Wilmott and Spike Lee, starring Nick Cannon, Wesley Snipes, Teyonah Parris, Jennifer Hudson, and Angela Bassett, Amazon Studios/40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, 2015)

Another #ClassicsTwitterMovie, and the final movie in my Ancient Greece and Rome on the Big Screen course. The Twitter thread is here. This is an extremely important movie, for reasons that Nadhira Hill discussed briefly in her talk at the Res Difficiles 2.0 conference, the day before we did our viewing. She says 'for the first [and only] time I was seeing people like me [i.e. Black Americans] engaging with Classics'. This is a very important thing to say. It is still all too easy to conceive of Classics as by whites, for whites, and about whites. Chi-Raq says that these texts are part of Black American culture as well, just as Athol Fugard, John Kani, and Winston Ntshona's The Island connected Black Africans with Sophocles. It's also a pretty good movie, that deserves to be better known. It negotiates shifting tone from comedy to brutal tragedy effectively, and rather than exploiting Black trauma for the purposes of entertainment, as some accused it of, it uses entertainment to highlight Black trauma. Classical Receptions Bingo Card: Essential.

27. Mank (USA, dir. David Fincher, scr. Jack Fincher, starring Gary Oldman, Netflix International Pictures, 2020) *

Another virtual film night movie. The significantly fictionalised story of the creation of the screenplay for Citizen Kane, this has been festooned with Oscar nominations, at least partly, I suspect, because Hollywood likes to celebrate itself, even if this movie does attack the financial duplicity of Louis B. Meyer, and the pro-Republican propaganda of Irving Thalberg. It's beautifully shot, and a nice bit of familial pietas, as David Fincher directs a script by his late father, and Charles Dance is superb as William Randolph Hearst. But Gary Oldman is giving That Gary Oldman Performance, that we've seen before in Leon and Immortal Beloved. It doesn't help that he's about twenty years too old for the role; as the screenplay reminds us regularly, Herman Mankiewicz was in his mid-forties when he wrote Citizen Kane, and his mid- to late thirties for the flashbacks when he was part of William Randolph Hearst's circle, whilst Oldman is in his early sixties. This is not to say that Mank is bad, but I don't think it's as good as everyone else is saying it is. Classical Receptions Bingo Card: Mankiewicz's younger brother Joe, depicted in the movie, went on to direct 1953's Julius Caesar and 1963's Cleopatra.

28. Hail, Caesar! (USA/UK/Japan, dir. and scr. Joel Coen & Ethan Coen, starring Josh Brolin, George Clooney, Alden Ehrenreich, Ralph Fiennes, Jonah Hill, Scarlett Johansson, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton, and Channing Tatum, Universal Pictures/Working Title Films/Mike Zoss Productions, 2016) 

Another #ClassicsTwitterMovie. My Twitter thread is here, and I actually reviewed this movie when it came out. It has a lot of the same Old Hollywood vibes as Mank. But it's a much less cynical work, with more of a feeling that Hollywood is doing something worthwhile. Of all the Coen Brothers movies I've seen, it is the one with the least substance. But it's still a lot of fun. Classical Receptions Bingo Card: Not just the movie-within-a-movie Hail, Caesar!, but also some of the elements in Scarlett Johansson's Esther Williams routine.

Books

1. Ursula K. Le Guin, Changing Planes (Boston, MA, & New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2003) *

I've actually read a book this year. I read this for an Ursula K. Le Guin reading group I'm part of. It's a collection of short stories about different planes that can be accessed while waiting for planes. Few of these are straightforward stories with beginnings, middles and ends; most of them feel like entries in a travel guide, if a little more literary. A number of the stories are satirical, particularly one, 'The Royals of Hegn', attacking the British obsession with the Royal Family. Quite a few stories are about the fact that we can never really understand the foreign cultures we visit; in one, 'Feeling at home with the Hennebet', the narrator is unable to understand the meaning of certain words the Hennebet use which are obvious to them, in 'The Nna Mmoy Language' an entire language is incomprehensible, and in 'The Building' locals are unable to explain in a manner that visitors can grasp why they have been working on a building for centuries. Classical Receptions Bingo Card: On one plane, the locals look very much like satyrs. 

Comics

4. Three, by Kieron Gillen, Ryan Kelly, Jordie Bellaire, and Clayton Cowles (Image, 2014).

February's entry for #ClassicsTwitterComics. Every year or so, I reread Three. Not because I love it, but to try to find out why I don't. I ought to. It's a reception of ancient Sparta. I'm interested in any form of comics reception of the ancient world, and have been interested in Sparta since my days as a postgraduate, supervised by the man who was the historical consultant for Three. The writing is obviously skillful, and the art superior. Other Kieron Gillen stuff I do love, like Phonogram and The Wicked + The Divine. (I also know Kieron and like him; fortunately, he's well aware that Three doesn't quite work for me, and this isn't an issue between us.) When other people talk about why they think Three is so great, on an intellectual level I can absolutely see where they're coming from. Yet every time, I bounce off the story. For some reason, I just don't seem to care that much about the three helots, or King Kleomenes II. I expect, after so many rereadings, there's now very little chance either that I will have a sudden revelation and get it, or that I will finally understand what my problem is with the comic. Classical Receptions Bingo Card: On the plus side the notes and conversation between Gillen and Steve Hodkinson brought me up to date on a lot of Spartan stuff.

5. InSeXts, vol. 2: The Necropolis, by Marguerite Bennett and Ariela Kristantina *

#ClassicsTwitterComics for March. I'm not really familiar either with this series (I haven't read volume 1) or Marguerite Bennett's work, though I've certainly heard her name get mentioned. At the heart of the story are two queer women who can transform themselves into insectoid bodies; it's a bit Ali Smith meets Kafka's Metamorphosis. These two have to make their way in a world that rejects independent women, often in the person of some violent men, who are met with violence. It's an interesting comic, that reminds me a lot of Alan Moore's Promethea, in both good and bad ways; it's beautifully drawn, and the colours, by Jessica Kholinne, are particularly gorgeous. The story is very interested in the occult and magic, and the writing is often very clever, but it does have a tendency to go off on long didactic speeches, conveying messages that need saying, but which one suspects the audience already takes as given anyway. Classical Receptions Bingo Card: That's a Medusa figure on the cover, though she's never actually named as such.  

As a postscript, the reviews of She-Hulk I mentioned in the last one of these posts, have now appeared at The Slings and Arrows Graphic Novel Guide. I reviewed Essential The Savage She-Hulk, Marvel Masterworks: The Savage She-Hulk, volumes 1 and 2, The Sensational She-Hulk by John Byrne, and Sensational She-Hulk: The Return, and the collected Sensational She-Hulk by John Byrne Omnibus. The Savage She-Hulk material is drivel; positively embarrassing. The John Byrne material is very much better. The Return isn't so great; Byrne quickly seems to lose interest, and starts repeating himself, and the gag wears thin pretty quickly. But the collection of his first run is really quite fun. Nothing earth-shatteringly significant at all; just gags about the medium (Deadpool before Deadpool, and less crude), and a series of Marvel's Silliest Villains. But it's not meant to be particularly significant. It's just a bit of fun on Byrne's part. Some people don't like Byrne's artwork; I generally do, though I think he tends to be better with a sympathetic inker than when inking himself, and sometimes (though not really in this material) he can make people look emaciated. Byrne has turned into a horrible man in his old age, but he rescued She-Hulk and gave her a personality, and She-Hulk fans have to acknowledge that. (In fairness, I think that mostly they do.) And yes, I know the colouring on that cover is horrible. Classical Receptions Bingo Card: There's lots of references to Prince Namor, ruler of Atlantis, whom Byrne was writing at the same time.

Additionally, two reviews I wrote of William Messner-Loebs and Sam Kieth's Epicurus the Sage have appeared on the same site, of volumes 1 and 2. As a Classicist, I find Epicurus, with its unashamedly anachronistic mixing of historical figures from different periods and mythological personages, very amusing, but I strongly suspect I am almost exactly the target audience; certainly, some have attacked Epicurus for its niche interests, though other non-Classicists like it, and there is plenty of slapstick to keep the reader entertained. I would also contend, much like Austin Powers, that the later iterations of Epicurus never quite match the sheer invention of the first, and indeed (and much, again, like Austin Powers) it ends up re-using the same jokes. This is not to say that volume 2 is bad; it just isn't quite as good as volume 1. I hope to be writing in more depth about the reception of the Persephone myth in volume 1; you can watch a preliminary version of what I have to say one hour into the video here, but I warn you that this is very preliminary, and there's a lot more work I need to do on this material. Anyway, I think there are far worse receptions of Ancient Greek pholosophy out there. Classical Receptions Bingo Card: There's this cave, with shadows, and stuff ...   

Virtual Theatre

5. Girl on an Altar, by Marina Carr, directed by Susie McKenna and Indhu Rubasingham, Kiln Theatre, 2021 *

This rehearsed reading presented a project that Kilburn's Kiln Theatre are working on, an adaptation of the myth of Iphigenia and Clytemnestra. It takes a lot of liberties with the most commonly known version, but that's allowed. The actual sacrifice of Iphigenia takes up a short amount of time at the beginning, and most of this play is devoted to what happens after Agamemnon returns home, which is considerably extended beyond the version familiar from Aeschylus, with a child of Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus being introduced, as well as children of Agamemnon and Cassandra, and full-scale war between Agamemnon on one side and Aegisthus and Clytemnestra's father Tyndareus on the other. The presentation of this is a bit odd; actors are both delivering their lines, and also narrating portions of the story as if it were a book that they are reading out loud. I'm not sure that this entirely works, and it might well work less when everyone is in full costume, though it does allow a lot of information to be conveyed, and a lot of expository dialogue to be omitted. As a whole, this didn't blow me away, but it wasn't awful either. Classical Receptions Bingo Card: Agamemnon kills Tyndareus in battle. No, really.

6. Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare, directed by Erica Whyman, starring Bally Gill and Karen Fishwick, Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford, 2018 *

I'm also in a virtual theatre-going group, and this was seen with them, though it was shown on BBC Four as part of their Culture in Quarantine: Shakespeare series; I've put it here as it is a recorded play performance. The plot is pretty well-known to everyone, though I had forgotten the role of Paris in events. This was a good production, with particular standout performances from Gill as Romeo, and Andrew French as Friar Laurence, perpetrator of one of the worst cunning plans in literature. Karen Fishwick's Juliet was a bit over-the-top at first, but I warmed to her as the play went on, and everything got more serious. Classical Receptions Bingo Card: 'You are a lover; borrow Cupid's wings.'

7. Medea, by Euripides, translated by Mary-Kay Gamel, directed by Rob Melrose, starring Elizabeth Bunch, Alley Theatre, 2021 *

An interesting comparison with Pasolini's movie, seen with my virtual theatre group (or at least a small subset of them). The production was made by filming all the cast in close-up; none of them interacts physically with anyone else. Mary-Kay Gamel's translation is excellent; vibrant English that still respects the Greek. And there are excellent performances, particularly from Elizabeth Bunch in the title role, and Chris Hutchinson as a loathsome Jason, who clearly believes in the rightness of his actions. This is still available to see until 11 April, and I heartily recommend it. Classical Recptions Bingo Card: Still not Team Jason. 

Audio

1. 'Rosemary Sutcliff and Re-imagining Roman Britain', Coffee and Circuses, https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/coffee-and-circuses/1-documentary-rosemary-RQ8mvdpOnTH/ (2020) *

Last year I got invited to contribute to a documentary on Rosemary Sutcliff, which I was delighted to do. But I hadn't listened to it yet. I sound terrible, but lots of other people also contribute much more interesting bits. I found it very useful for filling in some of Sutcliff's background. There are some very poignant reminiscences from her godson, and an interesting light on how she felt about the relationships between men she depicted. (Had I listened to this earlier, I would probably have talked about a Sutcliff novel for my LGBT+HM show-and-tell.) I should be getting round to rereading her books in the next few months, so that will get reported here. Classical Receptions Bingo Card: Eagles.

(I have also been listening to a lot of episodes of Hammer House of Podcast, which is fun. I've been working my way from the beginning, and have got up to Bonus Episode 23, and have also listened to the latest five episodes, and, for research purposes, the one on She.)

Kidbrooke Lysistrata redux

I raved about this production a couple of months back. Well, it's back, so go and see it if you can.

Make cakes, not war

I've been remiss in blogging the annual UCL and King's Classics Plays this year. Both were enjoyable.

UCL put on Aristophanes' Lysistrata, for the third time in twelve years. Well, it's a good play, with much to laugh at. I saw it on the first performance, and there was clearly a degree of nervousness in the cast. This was particularly apparent in the actress playing Lysistrata (admittedly, a big, tough role to play). But it clearly was just nerves, and the cast was noticeably more confident after the interval. I'm sure they got better as the run progressed. The Cinesias/Myrrhine scene was well done, always a touchstone of the quality of a production. Setting the whole thing in the Peninsular War was interesting, though the idea wasn't taken much further than as a source for costume design. And whilst I am in principle against retaining the references to Aristophanes' contemporaries that mean nothing to a modern audience, this cast did at least manage to convey the impression that such references meant something to them.

I've been quite lukewarm about recent King's productions, feeling that they often looked under-rehearsed. Last year, I was picked up on this, with a commenter arguing that I was expecting too much of the productions. Well, there's probably some truth, but I do think it's important to say when one thought things could have been better. And they can, as this year's play showed. Because it was clear in the performance I saw that King's have considerably upped their game. Georgia Crick Collins as Helen, Ben Donaldson as Menelaus and Anna Perfitt as Theonoe were particularly good, all managing to act rather than just recite. Donaldson in particular gave the audience a Menelaus who retains his nobility, and is not just an idiot, as can sometimes be the case in this play. And the idea of using the Chorus to enact scenes being recounted, tried out last year in Persians, worked really well this year. The best King's Play I've seen since Rhesus in 2005.

But this isn't the production I want to praise most in this entry. Last night I went to see a production of Lysistrata, given by students of Kidbrooke School. I confess that I hadn't gone expecting much, but it was stunningly good, and I laughed more than I have at an Aristophanes production for a few years; it's certainly the best of the three Lysistratas I've seen in the last twelve months (the other being an Actors of Dionysus production). The whole thing was done as a cross-dressing romp, with most of the female parts played by boys, and the male ones by girls. It's actually quite encouraging that a bunch of teenage boys are willing to dress up in women's clothing and camp it up in front of their mates.

The text used was Laurence Houseman's 1911 version (Houseman was the brother of A.E. Houseman, a gay man when that was very illegal, and a supporter of the Suffragette movement). That might not seem to be the best idea to get the humour of the original out, and indeed, there are few actual laughs in the text, which, unsurprisingly, eliminates a lot of the filth from Aristophanes's text. But the humour and some of the filth are put back by the production, costumes and performances of the cast, as well as a fair bit of political engagement.

What I think makes this production work is an understanding that Lysistrata is not a play about sex, or women's rights, but about war. This is underlined at the beginning, in the introduction of a bloodied figure of Peace (in place of Reconciliation), and in an end which ought to be hackneyed, but is in fact astonishing.

As far as I know, this production has not come out of Classical outreach initiatives, and it is extremely heartening that people still turn unprompted to Greek drama. I would be pleased by this production just for that reason. The bonus on the cake is how good it is. I often find myself feeling that I have become an old cynic, and am far too difficult to impress these days. And then something like this comes along, and just blows me away with what can be achieved.

It's still on this evening and tomorrow. If you have a chance, I urge you to see it.

K.J. Dover, RIP

News reaches me of the death of Sir Kenneth Dover, one of the great Hellenists of the latter part of the twentieth century. Coincidentally, I was reading one of his books, Aristophanic Comedy, a couple of days ago, as part of my own work on Aristophanes' Frogs (yes, it's a link to Wikipedia), and wondering if he was still alive. I only met him once, very briefly, and he was quite old then.

Dover is, unfortunately, perhaps best known for some slightly silly remarks he wrote in his autobiography, Marginal Comment, about driving his Oxford colleague Trevor Aston to suicide, comments that got blown further out of proportion by the media. Within the Classics community, it is his writings that will be remembered. Greek Homosexuality was a - erm - seminal work, that set the terms of the debate on the subject, projecting a view in which male-male sexual relations were power relations between older and younger men, and not ones of mutual desire. In recent years people have been deconstructing his model of same-sex relations in the Greek world, notably James Davidson in The Greeks and Greek Love. But Dover cannot be discarded.

I've probably in recent years made most use of his work on Aristophanes - the aforementioned Aristophanic Comedy, commentaries on Frogs and Clouds, and the section on Clouds from a companion to the Penguin translation of Acharnians, Lysistrata and Clouds (the writing on Clouds, okay, I haven't used, but may well in the future). I don't always agree with Dover - like many Aristophanic scholars, I sometimes feel he gives more attention to strict philological interpretations of the text, and not enough to what actually works as comic theatre (this is why one of my academic heroes is Gilbert Murray, who knew not just how to go through a text with a fine-toothed comb, but also how to write for the stage, and allowed the latter practice to inform the former). But, again, his contributions remain of major significance. With the death earlier this year of Douglas MacDowell, another scholar whose work I respected but did not always agree with (though I think I have amended some of my opinions since I wrote that review), it's been a bad few months for Aristophanic scholarship.

Dover also made major contributions to scholarship on Thucydides. He wrote school/undergraduate commentaries on Books VI and VII, and, with Anthony Andrewes (not the Brideshead Revisited actor, who doesn't spell his name like that), completed Gomme's classic historical commentary on Thucydides. It was in these works that I first encountered Dover, as a young schoolboy setting out on what would turn out to be an erratic career in the Classics. (Inevitably, the wags at school referred to him as 'Ben' Dover. I suspect this happened in many schools.)

It was also about this time that I saw Dover on television, as part of a BBC series on the Greeks. Dover was sat talking to the documentary maker, Christopher Burstall, in a small boat off the Piraeus. I never quite understood the reason for this seemingly unnecessarily dangerous activity, but a scholar off this importance is allowed his eccentricities. And, though it's sad that he's died, at 89 he had a good and fulfilled life.

King's Greek Play 2006

Aristophanes, Women Take Power (Ecclesiazusae), King's College London Greek Play, Greenwood Theatre

Performance seen: February 9th 2006

Last year, as I reported, University College London chose to produce Aristophanes' Knights, one of the comic writer's earlier plays, before he hit the peak of his form. This year, King's have chosen to stage Ecclesiazusae (usually translated as 'Women At The Assembly'), one of his last plays from when he had, to be frank, gone off the boil a bit. It is a play that presents certain challenges. Aristophanes was moving at a brisk trot down the road that led from Old to New Comedy, which creates something that is up to a point neither one genre or the other (hence Ecclesiazusae is sometimes labelled Middle Comedy). And the structure rather falls apart in the second half in the way that some earlier Aristophanes (e.g. Lysistrata) threatens to but never quite does.

In any case, I wasn't sure what to expect of Aristophanes in Greek - up to now all the Athenian drama I've seen in the original language has been tragedy. It's certainly the case that my usual instinct with Aristophanes, that one should throw out the actual text, does not apply when presenting in Greek. But would the whole thing be funny if one can't follow what is actually said, and is reliant upon surtitles?

The King's production's solution to the structural problem is, to a degree, to try to make a virtue of it, by emphasizing the episodic nature, though, in contrast to previous King's Greek plays, there is no interval, perhaps in case this would make the play too disjointed. I am unsure whether this tries the audience's patience a little too much.

In other ways, however, an attempt is made to grant unity to the play. The disappearance of the central character Praxagora in the middle is dealt with by finding ways of reminding the audience that she has created the society in which the later incidents play out, either by hanging her portrait, or by (slightly oddly) having her silently arm-wrestling, or by giving her some of the Chorus' lines in the final scene.

The solution to the language problem is to turn to the heritage of the silent movie. Rather than surtitles that summarize 50-70% of the dialogue, a small number of captions are used, as in pre-sound cinema. The surtitles are integrated into the performance as a whole, rather than being an additional distraction from the action (with one joke where the captions are in Greek and the actor speaks English). Something is of course lost in such an approach, but it would probably be lost anyway. What is gained is an increased emphasis on the visual aspects of the production, with the spoken text becoming like the music score, an accompaniment to what we are seeing, rather than its raison d'etre. Inevitably this pushes the production towards greater use of slapstick comedy. This shows particularly in the choreography of the Chorus, from whose ranks are drawn minor roles such as the Women who discuss with Praxagora how to take over the Athenian Assembly. The captions are also used to distinguish between the more traditional sections of the play, that strongly feature the Chorus, where the captions have visual illustrations and are arranged to look like artworks in their own right, and the more 'modern' parts that eliminate the Chorus, where traditional text-only captions are used, often with the sort of frames familiar from silents.

The silent movie motif is repeated in the costuming, where Chaplin and the Keystone Kops are referenced. This then leads to a 1920s theme in the production design, which seems to have found Dadaism via Art Deco (a style similar to that used by UCL in their very successful Lysistrata from 1999). Thus one sometimes has the feeling with the King's production of watching not only a silent movie, but a Surrealist one, where, for instance, the facial hair sported by the women as they disguise themselves as men (disguises also indicated by the simple device of wearing trousers, removed - offstage - when the disguises are dropped) apparently influenced by Salvador Dali. I should not have been surprised had the production chosen to rearrange the order of the later episodes of the play - the episodic nature certainly permits such an approach.

It might be pushing the 1920s theme a bit too far to see in Praxagora's army uniform and the military march of the Chorus past her a reference to Mussolini, though other more recent fascist dictatorships are surely intended. But clearly the motif is at the forefront of the one moment of utter comic genius, the staging of the Hag scene, where a hag and a young girl, and then later two hags (two completely different hags from the first in the text, but sensibly this is reduced to two hags overall), compete for the sexual favours of a young man (according to Praxagora's new order, the old and ugly must be sexually serviced before the young and beautiful). Brilliantly, the Greek text here is set to the music of George Gershwin, and the whole scene just works.

That is probably the most successful idea that production has. Some other ideas are not quite so effective - for instance, in a play where women disguising themselves as men is central to the plot, it seems to me distracting to have some of the unequivocally male roles played by women. The lack of props weakens the scene where a householder is getting his property ready for communal division - the miming of movement of household objects doesn't quite work. And the problem of how to represent Blepyrus' onstage defecation is never quite solved. But it is better to have ideas and for some of them not to work than to have no ideas at all.

As is ever the way with this sort of production, some of the performances are better than others. I shan't single out the less good, but Nicola McCabe's confident approach to Praxagora deserves mention.

Overall, I should say that this is an interesting staging, which tries to deal innovatively with the problems of presenting comedy in Greek, and of this particular play. It will certainly remain in my mind, even if, on the whole, the production delivered mild amusement rather than belly laughs. At the very least all concerned deserve praise for trying something a little different.

UCL Greek Play: Aristophanes' Knights

Performance seen: 02/03/05.

Where King's College London traditionally stages a play in the original Greek every year, the students of University College London make their contribution to the London Festival of Greek Drama by presenting a play in English translation. This year they presented Aristophanes' Knights.

The choice of this play presents some intrinsic problems for any production. Aristophanes later plays, such as Lysistrata or The Birds, are gifts to a producer, full of such comic situations that half a production's job is already done. Knights is different. It's ... well, a bit dull, to be honest. The second earliest surviving play of Aristophanes, and the first he presented under his own name, Knights appears to have been done on the cheap, with the bare minimum of non-speaking extras and costume changes for its three actors. This means that an awful lot of the play is just two men, Paphlagon (meant to represent the Athenian politician Cleon) and Agorakritos, the sausage seller, shouting at each other. It certainly impressed the audience at the time, winning first prize in the dramatic festival of the Lenaia of 424 BC, but for me, at least, Aristophanes' very best work belongs to the following decade. Knights lacks the variety of incident to be found in his other comedies. The UCL production tried to overcome that, but there was still a long section early in the second act where no-one was laughing at all, and the audience’s attention seemed to have drifted. The fault here is at least in part Aristophanes' - he's just not giving the cast the sort of juicy material that we normally expect of him. (But it was also a very cold night through which the audience had struggled, and this may well have dampened their enthusiasm.)

But I can see why it was chosen. There is, despite what I've just said about the weakness of the writing, a lot of potential in Knights, and much that can be made relevant to a modern audience. It is a play about corrupt and scheming politicians pandering to the public's baser instincts, stoking public fears in order curry votes. Some of Aristophanes' lines could not be more appropriate to the week in which Tony Blair and Charles Clarke try to force through repressive anti-terrorism laws in the name of protecting the public. There is therefore much potential for a director prepared to disrespect Aristophanes' text in order to respect the spirit.

The UCL production, directed by Graham Kirby and Reema Selhi, shows its hand early. The production is labelled from the start as an 'adaptation' of Aristophanes, and a glossary included in the programme gives a definition of 'Argos' that covers both the Greek city-state and the catalogue shop. Both of these are good signs. The production follows this up. Set in the modern offices of Athens Inc., Demosthenes becomes an Essex wide boy, Nicias camp, Paphlagon an aggressive brace-wearing City broker, with a touch of David Brent about him. The Sausage-seller is cunningly transformed into a sandwich seller (oddly played by two different people in the two acts, but this does allow a more dramatic rendition of the report of the Assembly that opens the second act, with the second Sandwich Seller acting as narrator and the first speaking the words addressed to the Assembly). The Sandwich Seller gradually metamorphoses into an impersonation of Tony Blair. This cleverly undercuts one view of the play, that, for all that he out-brazens Paphlagon, the Sausage-Seller is at heart someone who will restore the state to its former virtuous state; the Blairite Sandwich Seller is just as corrupt and unscrupulous, and distinguished from Paphlagon merely by being more clever.

Another innovation in the adaptation is to find a few more things for Demosthenes and Nicias to do later in the play. This at least slightly conceals a feature of Aristophanic comedy, the sudden disappearance of supposedly important characters from the plot, as the actors are required to play different roles.

Another Aristophanic convention is the appearance of a naked non-speaking female (or more than one) who is a gift to one (or more) of the principal characters. This is all very well when said naked girl is played by a man in a padded suit. But under the more naturalistic conventions of the modern western theatre, even when sufficiently clothed to maintain public decency, a casual sexism can enter through the usual half-naked woman. Casting a female as Demos allowed a half-naked male to appear as a peace treaty, which avoids this. (I noted that one of the directors had appeared in 2004's UCL Lysistrata as Reconciliation, the equivalent role.)

I appreciated the boldness of the approach to the adaptation, and only wish it could have been bolder still. I'd have liked to have seen more fifth-century references excised and replaced by modern allusions (although in fairness a performance in the London Festival of Greek Drama has the knowledge that its audience will mostly be students or other people with a Classical background, so greater familiarity can be assumed). I did have a slight feeling that the directors were a little lacking in confidence in what they. Perhaps indicative of this is the retention of Alan Sommerstein's Penguin translation for the Choruses. It's fine verse, but the difference between that and the modernized adaptation of the rest of the text acts as a distancing device between the Chorus and the audience, where in much Old Comedy (especially Knights), the one is supposed to identify with the other.

Some of the principal performers were a little on the quiet side. This was especially apparent when they had to compete with a slightly over-loud music track. (But I can’t fault the choice of The Beatles' 'Revolution' as pre-performance music.) This audibility problem did not affect the Chorus, who projected clearly. One member gave a memorable performance which I can only describe as Frank Finlay impersonating Laurence Olivier whilst on acid. In any case, these are not professional actors, and it is unfair to hold them to fully professional standards.

On the whole, I thought this production never quite lived up to the potential of its ideas. However, I can't deny that it showed imagination and ambition, which was a pleasant change after last year's disappointing Lysistrata, which seemed very lacking in those areas (see my review linked to from this page of the Open University's Classical Studies Greek Drama and Poetry Database Project). In theatre it is always better to aim high and miss than to aim low.