I marked the first week of
November 2016 with two visits to live theatre, the Sunderland Empire and the
Northern Stage, Newcastle and two visits to see films at the Cineworld, Bolden.
I also watched two films on TV in addition the DVDs of the Opera AIDA 1989 and
2009.
I begin with my visit on
Friday November 4th 2016 to
Northern Stage, Newcastle, for a performance of a 2500-year-old play against
forced marriage by 50 asylum seeking young women who cross the sea thus echoing
the plight of the boatpeople of Vietnam recently reviewed in a cinema showing
and video of Miss Saigon at the end of October and with thoughts on the latest
200 souls lost off the coast of Libya earlier this week together with thousands
of young women forced into marriage, in the present, often still children, now
as then.
I had booked end of aisle seat
for-The Suppliant women by the Greek
poet playwright Aeschylus at Northern State as part of a special two show package
for £30 (The Season ticket being the other) and although noting that it was
being interpreted as a play about a group of virgin young women seeking asylum
and against forced married, I made no other preparation in advance of attending
the performance.
I was not aware of the
production history or the unique aspects of the production. I arrived early at
the theatre having a good journey from Shields to Gateshead vis Jarrow and
Hebburn to avoid the roadworks on the main road out of South Shields to the
junction between the A1M and the Sunderland Gateshead and Newcastle road. It was a cold night with the hint of rain so
I quickly walked from the Tesco car park Gateshead to the Metro station,
missing a train as I took the stairs to the platform, but fortunately another
was due within minutes. I arrived early at the Haymarket station wanting to
visit Marks and Spencer’s for three cartons of mixed olives for £7 and then
found that the sandwich snack and coffee services was already closed.
Fortunately, I could find a seat a find the last seat available but close to
the stage 2 entrance where the automatic door opened constantly with the early
7pm start at stage 2, people going to the toilets and staff bringing food from
the kitchen. I was able then to move to a two-person table later and observe
the usual mix of eaters and drinkers, theatre patrons, university staff with
families and the wealthier of the students as eating and drinking here includes
a subsidy to theatrical productions and its other activities which provides for
an ongoing community involvement.
The need for subsidy from the
bar was brought out before the play commenced as a spokesman for the production
introducing the person invited to give the libation explaining that for every
£10 of ticket contribution, the audience paid £5, the arts Council from our taxation
£4 and donors 50p hence the need an addition 50p at the bar. The libation to
the Gods of Greece comprised emptying one bottle of red wine slowly along the
front of the stage. My seat was four rows from the front but as the two next to
me were occupied by large people I could sit immediately in front with space on
my right enabling a woman also on her own take my original seat.
The special aspect of the
production which first opened at the Lyceum Edinburgh, then in Belfast and then
here in Newcstle was the recruitment of the chorus locally from anyone
interested and available in the two age brackets of 16-26 for the young women
and above an unstated age for the wise women. It is my understanding from the after
show discussion that despite the varying abilities and varying previous amateur
experience all wanting to participate could do so in all three cities. The
Newcastle stage is open and theatre wide which provides great proximity and
interaction with the audience, although limiting scenery and props compared to
the traditional constructed theatres.
The play is presented as a
chorus work creating a singing tempo with the use of the Greek Aulos wind
instrument (Callum Armstrong) and Percussion (Ben Burton) which provided the
period and the beat. John Browne who composed the music and directed and where
the rhythmic movement was also essential (Choreographer Sasha Milavic Davis)
and Director Ramin Grey knitting the production team together with professional
actors and those recruited locally.
There were special vocal and movement coaches recruited for the
Newcastle production (Marian Rezaei and Nadia Iftkar).
An issue taken up with the
scripting by David Grieg who used an English Translation by Ian Ruffell was the
extent to which the work was given a deliberate contemporary slant which at one
level appears a degree of anti-men feminism unthinkable at the time the play
was performed sometime after 470 BC and this led to find an online free full
translation via Wikipedia via the Bacchicstage link as the first mentioned does
not work and the second involves a fee. Marriage with the close family
structure was normal at the time and a widow could be expected to marry her
brother and which was designed to protect the family wealth, estates and power.
The play is based on Greek
myth where in the legend Danaus who becomes King of Argos, a real place to this
day, agrees in the end to the request that his daughter marry their first
cousins but orders that the men be killed on the wedding night which all do except
one and who in some versions are said she kills her father and take power with
her husband. It is also alleged that those daughters with immediate suitors
were to be auctioned off in a foot race to winners.
In the play the chorus should
have fifty daughters symbolically of one man (Danaus) fleeing from the requirement
to marry the fifty sons of his brother. None of the productions managed to
recruit the intended full cast of the daughters although the stated maids are
presented in the production as the wise women who come on stage later in the production.
The young women have fled across the sea from Egypt to an altar on a hill with
statues of various Gods outside the walled city of Argos in Greece and where they
are using olive branches adorned with white wool and they explain that they
have fled because were being forced into a sinful marriage. Photos of present
day Argos do show a temple site rising just above the present city located on a
plain with the sea in the distance.
The daughters call on Zeus to
look kindly on their innocent hearts with justice, to stand by and protect from
the hateful marriages. They pray and in line 160 that they refer to themselves
as the Suppliant Women.
Their symbolic father Danaus (played
by Omar Ebrahim (and who also performs the role of the Egyptian Herald) who has
accompanied them on the escape gives sound advice as the army from the city
approach to inquiry about their visitors and when he suggests their show
respect and humility as they are foreigners, hunted and in great need, but
adding” The weak must never speak too freely,” having also commented that “the
men here are easily offended.” Given
that originally the players were men to an all-male audience, the play can be interpreted
as a warning to the men to be on constant guard against the emancipation of
women. It must also be pointed out that slavery was natural in Greece and the
personal maids accompanying the daughters would have been slaves.
The young King of Argos arrives
(Oscar Batterham) and comments on their bravery coming without military support
and sees the olive branches which mark them as Suppliants seeking protection).
The young women explain they are being required to marry the sons of their
father’s brother. They have come to Argos because it is there original homeland,
reminding of the applications from the Calais refugees to join relatives
already in the UK. The king is sympathetic but the decision will be that of the
people through a referendum vote (of the eligible men)!
There is a unanimous vote in
favour of providing hospitality and protection. Later the chorus call on the
citizens to give them just rights and due process to the strangers at their
gates. Then ships arrive from Egypt and the chorus warns that the daughters would
rather hang from the noose than be touched by the men they hate. The Egyptian
Herald arrives and threatens to drag them by the hair soaked in their own blood
if they refuse to return voluntarily. The King asks the Herald if such dreadful
behaviour reveals they are bereft of brains? The King is then accompanied by
men from the army of the people to make sure he is not attacked as he warns the
Herald the women have the protection of the people.
It is time for Danaus to give
further advice to the young women- Time will
reveal the true nature of a foreign stranger. Scornful words are at the
forefront of everyone’ s mind when it coma to strangers and they are easy to utter
and easy for those evil words to stick. But I advise you to be careful and do
not shame me, you are in the youth now, and age that attracts and pleases the
eyes of men. Fruit that is ripe and ready for picking is hard to protect: both
beasts and gods destroy it and why not? And - take care then that we don’t
suffer what we have tried so hard to avoid. Struggle a crossing raging seas and
distant lands. See that we bring no shame on us and thus make our enemies happy
(line 1011). The production ends as the chorus comes to the edge of the stage
and along both sides of the theatre and declares with Passion-Let Justice follow
Justice, which was always my prayer to the Gods and that is our Liberation. The
chorus was led by Gemma May
The play is performed without
interval over 90 minutes which requires the chorus of amateurs to be on stage,
to sing, chant and dance and remember the words without a break which is a
great feat. The intention was to create a hypnotic switch from the present to a
Greece of the past with and awareness of its resent significance. This was
successful. On arrival in the auditorium an assistant hoped I would enjoy the
play to which I could not resist saying that I did not think it was a play to
enjoy. This made her think to question what word she should have used as much
to herself as me. So, I suggested “think, challenge, become engaged,
emotionally involved, and we had to stop the exchange as other arrived. I did
enjoy the film experienced earlier that same morning although it had some
challenging aspects-it engaged, it was entertaining, it was surprisingly funny
using clever wit and it also had a serious aspect which provoked thought at the
time and reflection since-. The Accountant.
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