Review Round-up: NT Goes Greek with Thebes
Former artistic director Richard Eyre has returned again to the National Theatre (after last year’s The Observer) to direct the premiere of Moira Buffini‘s Welcome to Thebes, which opened in the Olivier on Tuesday (22 June, previews from 15 June).
Set in the present day, but inspired by ancient myth, the play offers a
“passionate exploration of an encounter between the world’s richest and
poorest countries, set in the aftermath of a brutal war”. Faced with an
impoverished population, a shattered infrastructure and a volatile
army, the first democratic president of Thebes, Eurydice (Nikki Amuka-Bird), promises
peace to her nation. Without the aid of Theseus (David Harewood), the leader of the
vastly wealthy state of Athens, she doesn’t stand a chance. But Theseus
is arrogant, mercurial and motivated by profit.
Running as part of the Travelex £10 season, Welcome to Thebes continues in rep until 18 August 2010.
(four stars) – “Moira Buffini is only the second woman to have a new work staged in the Olivier and no one could accuse her of failing to rise to the challenge … Buffini, giving a modern twist to Greek myth and Attic tragedy, explores the plight of a female protagonist who becomes the first democratic president of a third-world country that is emerging from a brutal civil war … The result is an admirably ambitious, fascinating (if uneven) piece, premiered in a vivid, expertly marshalled production by Richard Eyre which is alive to the urgency of the play’s politics and to its engaging streak of iconoclastic humour … Performed on Tim Hatley’s spectacular set, of wrecked palace and glowering sky, Welcome to Thebes plays some irreverent tricks. Mischievously, the tragedy of Phaedra and Hippolytus is filtered through mobile phone calls that keep Theseus briefed about problems back home. In a running sight-gag, the blinded Haemon unerringly chats up the wrong girl.”
Times (five stars) – “Moira Buffini’s strange and
daring play is directed with brio by Sir Richard Eyre: it is moving,
wise, funny, horrifying, and studded with beautifully judged swearwords
… The reason it works – apart from the willingness to twist tragedy
into sudden black absurdity and back again – is not only that the myths
of Ancient Greece have a lot in common with African conflicts:
tribalism, superstition, breathtaking brutalities. It takes you wider.
Eurydice, fresh from house arrest, evokes Aung San Suu Kyi; the
arguments over justice versus a clean slate bring us home to the
Saville Inquiry; the Western intervention echoes Afghanistan … It’s
that sort of play: full of resonances you weren’t expecting, jokes you
didn’t see coming, tension becoming absurd and then tragic when a
conference table becomes the bitterest of biers … Go. Take a
politician.”
stars) – “Buffini uses classical characters to create a contemporary political fable. Thebes is presented as an African country emerging from civil war into democracy under the leadership of a president, Eurydice, with a definite feminist agenda … But, although Buffini explores the timeless oppositions between small and large states and order and chaos, there is a conceptual problem at the heart of her play. She clearly endorses the political logic of Eurydice’s argument that ‘there’s no such thing as destiny, only change’. Yet, because of her characters’ classical origins, you feel they are fulfilling a preordained destiny articulated by the sightless seer, Tiresias. Even if Buffini can never quite overcome the mythical baggage of the past, her play has a sustained narrative dynamic and is well-directed and designed by Richard Eyre and Tim Hatley … There is also a host of vibrant performances.”