Words: Rosie Hall
Image: Louise Mather

5 stars

The Bacchae is Company of Wolves’ one-man adaptation of Euripides’ original play, one of the oldest surviving Greek tragedies. It tells the story of Dionysus, the god of wine, of revelry, and (appropriately) of theatre. We meet Dionysus as he storms back to his home city of Thebes, ready to wreak revenge on his cousin king Pentheus and his aunt Agave for refusing to join his cult.

In Company of Wolves’ production, all characters are played by actor Ewan Downie. He is the young God himself, enraged and whipping the women of the city into a frenzied bacchanal atop Mount Cithaeron. He is Dionysus’ late mother Semele, ripped to shreds by the sheer sight of her lover, Zeus, in his true form. He is the stoic king Pentheus, imprisoned by his masculinity and desperate to clear back some semblance of power from his hedonistic cousin. And he is Pentheus’ broken mother, Dionysus’ aunt Agave, grieving the loss of her sister Semele and the emotional loss of her son the king, her nephew the God.

And Downie has the audience absolutely transfixed, totally gripped with the visceral impressionist prose and interweaving visual language of movement. The lights flicker and thrum along with the minimalist soundtrack, and Downie utterly commands the stage, building accretive layers of meaning through movement and speech. The speech, the movement, even the costume highlights the bleed and shift between binaries; of gender, of
human or animal; of lucidity and insanity, human or God.

The Bacchae is a truly sensational piece, a spellbinding, boundary-pushing work of solo theatre. Not to be missed.

The Bacchae
Assembly Roxy (Upstairs)
12:00
31st Jul – 24th Aug