Welcome to Thebes

This new play by Moira Buffini is running at London’s National Theatre. It updates a number of Greek stories to modern West Africa, taking on big geopolitical issues with a mainly black cast. Thebes is an unspecified country where civil was has recently ended in the election of Eurydice (Creon’s surviving wife) as president. She is trying amid the ruins of her country to re-establish some kind of civilisation. To help her in this Theseus (Athens’ “first citizen”) is visiting to try to arrange some kind of international aid. The drama thus raises the questions of democracy v. tyranny, women in politics, race (Theseus has white aides), religion (the charismatic warlord Tydeus is possessed by Dionysus), the state v. the individual, child soldiers, and many others. It is perhaps too issue-driven for its own dramatic coherence and it contains enough material for a whole trilogy with a comedy to follow.

For the classicist the interest is in the use of mythological figures in the modern setting. All the characters have Greek names which fit their character role. One of Theseus’ (white) aides is called Talthybia after the tragic message-carrying figure; one of the child-soldiers is named after one of the Furies (Megaera) who she tells us she represents; some cabinet ministers are named after the Muses, while others are called Strife (Eris, chief of police) and Force (Bia). The main characters (Eurydice, Theseus, Antigone, Ismene and Tiresias) are recognisably derived from their equivalents in Athenian tragedy. The emphasis from the author and the production team seems to be on the recreation of ancient myth in a modern setting, but there is also a large input from Greek literature as well. Sophocles’ Antigone is the main narrative line and it follows the story closely: Polynices’ body is found and lies bloodily to the side of the stage throughout. Eurydice (standing in for her dead husband Creon) forbids its burial in an autocratic decree at odds with her democratic credentials. Antigone (the “mad one”) decides to bury the body, while Ismene (the “nice one”) agonises over whether to help her. After a very tense scene in which one the black child-soldiers is shot by a white security guard, Eurydice changes her mind and the two victims of the violence are buried together. Buffini chooses not to make this motivate the final section of the play where Theseus changes his mind and decides to help the tottering state of Thebes, but it becomes just one of a number of highly-charged scenes racing the action forward. This pushes things on at a furious pace but does not allow the dramatic conflicts to linger and come to a slow climax. Instead she turns to another tragedy, Euripides Hippolytus, for the event that makes Theseus see things differently. He has been in touch by mobile phone with things at home and the events familiar to National Theatre audiences from last year’s highly successful Phèdre have been taking place off-stage. With extra extended references to Euripides’ Bacchai as well as Aeschylus’s Eumenides this is a rich mix of tragic themes. Even Aristophanes gets a look in with reminiscences of his Lysistrata in the takeover of government by women.

For all its serious themes, it is a very funny play with some excellent lines, but perhaps sometimes it appears as if Aristophanes had contributed extra jokes to a Sophocles script. At one point a character says to Antigone and Ismene “… and as for your motherf…ing father!” The Athenian festival of Dionysus knew better to keep tragedy and comedy firmly separated.

With strong performances from all the large committed cast, pacy direction and an atmospheric set this production shows how the old Greek stories can be used creatively to speak to each generation afresh. The dialogue with the Greeks continues to be lively, with that competitive edge which shows how the moderns can attempt to go one better. As Theseus says in the play “Tragedy shows us how to live”.