Reception of the texts and images of ancient greece

American Theatre (US)

Reviews, calendar listings of up-coming productions; informative but not scholarly. Full text since 1995 searchable on EBSCO (EBSCO is an online citations database which provides access to electronic journals and full text of articles for those journals managed through EBSCO.)

Vol 12, Issue 5, May/June 1995, 71-8, ‘D.L.’, ‘What the Hecuba’. (An article about Timberlake Wertenbaker’s adaptation of Hecuba at the American Conservatory Theatre, San Francisco, June 1995, with Carey Perloff directing, and Olympia Dukakis as Hecuba.)

Vol 13, Issue 10, December 1996, 7-9, Belinda Taylor, ‘That Special Argonaut’.(Report on the success of John Fisher’s Medea, the Musical, detailing its commercial success, the focus of the action, honours awarded to it, and information about John Fisher and the ensemble.)

Vol 14, Issue 10, December 1997, 32-4, Chris Jones, ‘Iphigenia Illuminated’. (A full, descriptive account of JoAnne Akalaitis’ production with the Court Theatre of Chicago in Illinois of Iphigenia in Aulis and Iphigenia in Tauris in October 1997.1 b/w photo of Anne Dudek (Iphigenia) rapping into a microphone. There is another full review of this production in The Village Voice, 27/1-2/2/1999, ‘Iffy Situations’, Michael Feingold. Search through The Village Voice homepage.

Vol 14, March 1998, pp 13-17, Irene Oppenheim, 'Come Fly With Me'' comments on comedy ensemble Culture Clash's adaptation of Aristophanes' 'Birds'; changes in the use of contemporary references; departures from the ancient Greek incarnation.

Vol 15, Issue 7, September 1998, 1-2, Jim O’Quinn, ‘Danger is Her Business’. Edited interview focuses on stage actress Karyofyllia Karabeti’s discussion of her role as the heroine in the National Theatre of Greece’s production of Medea. Complexity of role; pertinent message of play for society. 1 b/w photo.

[Return to top]

Arion (US)

Includes Review articles and poetry/prose

Third Series, Vol 4, Issue 1, 1996

(a) Herbert Golder 'Geek Tragedy, or, Why I’d Rather Go to the Movies' Includes a review of ' Les Atrides', Brooklyn Academy of Music 'Oedipus Trilogy', Royal Shakespeare Company, Barbican Theater, London, ' Medea', Almeida Theatre, London/Lonacre Theater, New York . (cf. response to Golder's article by Oliver Taplin in Arion, Third Series, 5.3, Winter, 1998.)

(b) Tony Harrison 'The Labourers of Herakles'.

(c) Robert Sonkowsky 'The Uses of Imprecision: The Clytemnestra Project at the Guthrie'.

(d) Ruth Padel 'Ion: Lost and Found Ion, the Lost Boy', co-production of Actors Touring Company, London and Piramatiki Skini tis Technis, Thessaloniki and 'Ion', Royal Shakespeare Company, Barbican Theatre, London.

(e) Oliver Taplin 'Les Atrides', Vincennes/Bradford.

Third Series, Volume 8 Issue 3, 2001, pp 90-114

pp 90-114, Marianne McDonald, 'A Classical Soap Opera for the Cultural Elite : Tantalus in Denver'

[Return to top]

Australasian Drama Studies (AUS)

Vol. 7, October 1985, 31-44; Gabrielle Hyslop, ‘Has Ariane Mnouchkine sold out?’

[Return to top]

Classical and Modern Literature (CML) (US)

Vol. 3, n.4, Summer 1983, 193-9, Gregory A. Staley, ‘"But Ancient Violence Longs to Breed": Robinson Jeffers’s The Bloody Sire and Aeschylus’s Oresteia’.

Vol. 15 , 1998, Karelisa V. Hartigan 'Herakles in a Technological World : An Ancient Myth Transformed'

Vol. 11, n. 4, Summer 1991, 317-24, Lowell Edmunds, ‘Oedipus in the Twentieth Century: Principal Dates’. (Themes and figures of Oedipus myth; includes list of works.)

Comparative Drama (US)

Wide-ranging in its subject matter, this journal lives up to the promise of its title. Some scholarly articles, some much more practice-based. Well worth a ‘trawl’.

22, n. 1, Spring 1988, 37-55; S. Georgia Nugent, ‘Masking Becomes Electra: O’Neill, Freud and the Feminine’.

23, n. 1, Spring 1989, 3, Anthony Kubiak, ‘Trial and Terror: Medea "Prima Facie"’.

27, n.3, Fall, 1993,

a) 271-85; Brian Johnston, ‘The Metamorphosis of Theseus in Oedipus at Colonus’.

b) 286-305; Jerome Mazzaro, ‘Mnema and Forgetting in Euripides’ The Bacchae’. (Theatre as a form of artificial memory. Theoretical, not performance focused.)

c) 377-98; Robert Baker-White, ‘The Politics of Ritual in Wole Soyinka’s The ‘Bacchae’ of Euripides’.Use of cross-cultural references to anarchic rituals (e.g. maypole dancing). Baker White takes issue with Brian Crow’s Romantic defence of Soyinka’s play. See, too, Theatre Research International, 12, 1987.

29, 1995-6,

a) 334-47; Albert Wertheim, ‘Euripides in South Africa: Medea and Demea’. Guy Butler wrote his version of Medea, Demea, in 1990 (publ. Cape Town & Johannesburg, David Philip, 1990), at a time when ‘the strictures of apartheid were loosening’ (Wertheim). His play is set in mid-nineteenth-century colonised S. Africa, and this article gives a good idea of how his reworking of the ‘racial and cultural prejudices’ he found in Medea arose from the context of that period.

b) 466-77, Timothy Richard Wutrich, ‘A Proposal for a Theater Museum: Staging the fragments of Greek and Roman Drama’. Wutrich suggests making intelligent guesses in order to reconstruct fragmentary texts - a similar approach to, for example, Russell Shone’s work on Andromeda with Chloë Productions.

30, n. 2, Summer 1996, 135-57, Anne Russell, ‘Tragedy, Gender, Performance: Women as Tragic Heroes on the Nineteenth-Century Stage’. Mostly about women in Shakespearean male tragic roles, but some information on a version of Ion by Thomas Noon Talfourd. Interesting about cross-dressed performances.

[Return to top]

Dialogos

1995, 54-70. Fiona MacIntosh, 'Under the Blue Pencil' An account of censorship of Oedipus Rex in England between 1679-1912

Didaskalia (UK)

Didaskalia appears exclusively in electronic format on the WorldWideWeb. The first four issues were originally archived at the University of Tasmania, Australia and are now published by The Open University, England at didaskalia.open.ac.uk. Regular issues appear in quarterly; supplemental issues consisting of conference proceedings, new translations, and relevant monographs will appear at intervals when there is no regular issue. Each issue from 1.1 to 3.1 has a theme around which its feature articles are centered. Themes have included 'Education and Outreach', 'Beyond Spoken Drama', 'Translating for the Stage', 'Fusions of Greek and Asian Drama,' and 'Embodying Ancient Theater.' A small sample from the Reviews section is given below.

1998, Mark Fleishman's 'A South African Medea', reviewd by Margaret Mezzabotta, http://www.didaskalia.net/issues/vol1no5/mezzabotta.html .

1996, 'Medea', Actors of Dionysus (Tr. and Directed by David Stuttard), reviewed by Sallie Goetsch, http://www.didaskalia.net/issues/vol3no2/aod.htm

1996, Seamus Heaney's 'Cure at Troy' (Directed by Francis Watson), reviewed by Marianne McDonald, http://www.didaskalia.net/issues/vol3no2/macheaney.html

1995, 'Frogs' Review of the RNT Mobile Production performance in Belfast, review by Antony Keen, http://www.didaskalia.net/issues/vol3no1/keen.html

Dionysus (UK)

Published by the Actors of Dionysus, each volume was originally designed to accompany an AoD production and provides background information and discussion of the events and topics in the play, and incudes essays and transcripts of pre - performance talks & lectures.Further information is available at the company's website http://www.actorsofdionysus.com

Issue 1, Alistair Elliot, 'On Translating Medea'. Article by Elliot on his translation and adaptation of the Medea for the Almeida (Diana Rigg) production (See DB no 168).

Issue 6, 1996, Lorna Hardwick, 'Euripides' Medea' : A Mystery of Family Values' (DB no 171).

Issue 9, 1998, Lorna Hardwick 'Male and Female Heroism in Sopholcles' Ajax'. General background information

Issue 12, 1999, Lorna Hardwick, 'Translating Hippolytus for the Modern Stage'. Text of a pre-performance talk (Hippolytus, Actors of Dionysus, Steiner Theatre, 19th March 1999).

Issue 15, 2001, Lorna Hardwick, 'The Play's the Thing : Modern staging of the Bacchae

Issue 15, 2001, Ruth Hazel, 'Performing 'The Bacchae'.

Drama (UK)

2, 1993, 195-211, S. Halliwell, ‘The function and the aesthetics of the Greek tragic mask’.

Drama Survey (US)

The following essays from the 1960s are interesting for their academic, non-performance-based approach, which reveals how Greek drama was still being viewed at that time.

Vol.1, n. 2, October 1961, 133-48, H.D.F. Kitto, ‘Oedipus Tyrannus’.

Vol 3, nos.1-3, Spring 1963-Winter’64, 33-41; Lillian Feder, ‘The symbol of the desert Island in Sophocles’ Philoctetes’.

Vol. 4, n.1, Spring 1965-9, 3-27; William V. Spanos, ‘T. S. Eliot’s The Family Reunion: the strategy of sacramental transfiguration’. More concerned with the Christian than the Greek.

Vol 4, n.2, Summer 1965, 149-58; Harry L. Levy, ‘The Oresteia of Aeschylus’.

[Return to top]

East European Quarterly (US)

An example of a journal providing a ‘one-off’ item relevant to this area. However, for articles on other aspects of Eastern European theatre, this publication, and Theatre in Poland (texts trans. into English and French) are worth checking.

22: 4, Winter 1988, 38ff, Paul Keresztes, ‘Sophocles’ Electra as a Hungarian Morality Play’.

Essays in Theatre/Etudes théâtrale (Guelph, CA)

Usually concentrates on Canadian theatre, so worth checking for known Canadian productions or projects on Greek drama.

n. 2, 1, November 1983, Peter Arnott, ‘Some costume conventions in Greek Tragedy’.

[Return to top]

Frontiers (US)

A feminist, rather than a theatre journal. A list of past issue contents can be found on the Frontier homepage .

Vol. 8, n. 1, 1984, 54-9, Carolyn A. Durham, ‘Medea: Hero or Heroine?’

[Return to top]

International Journal of the Classical Tradition

The IJCT, the official publication of the International Society for the Classical Tradition, is a quarterly periodical devoted to the scholarly study of the reception of Graeco-Roman antiquity in other cultures and later periods. It features articles, book reviews and review articles, short notes, research reports, and news of the field in any of five languages: English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish (all articles with abstracts in English). Available also on the web by subsciption only. For contents list and details of how to subscribe see the Society's web page http://web.bu.edu/ict/toc-intro.html , or email isct@bu.edu.

Vol. 3 no. 3, Winter 1997, 326-338, Lorna Hardwick, 'Reception as Simile : The Poetics of Reversal in Homer and Derek Walcott'. The article examines the simile as a formal technique which also generates and transmits intertextual relationships.

Vol. 4 no. 2, 1997, 232-246, Richard C. Jones III, "Talking amongst ourselves": Language, Politics and Sophocles on the Field Day Stage'.

1994, Summer, 107-128, Timothy Hofmeister, 'Iconoclasm, Elegy and Epiphany : Derek Walcott contemplating the bust of Homer'.

[Return to top]

Irish Theatre Forum (IR)

In its opening issue, the editor regrets the demise of Theatre Ireland journal, and hopes this electronic publication will help to fill the gap left by that journal’s going. Contributions vary from the papers given at a conference at the Drama Studies Centre, Dublin, as part of the 1997 Dublin Theatre Festival, to an interview with Brendan Kennelly, to reviews of plays currently in production. Electronically available at ITF

1.2, Winter 1997: Papers from the ‘Greeting the Critic’ Conference at UCD, 1997.

2.2, Summer 1998: Kelly Younger in interview with Brendan Kennelly, ‘Dionysus in Dublin: Brendan Kennelly’s Greek Triology [sic]’. (Kennelly on Antigone, Medea and Trojan Women)

2.3, Autumn 1998: Titto Repetto, ‘A Mask of Blood: a review of the Donmar Warehouse production of Electra’.

[Return to top]

London Theatre Record (UK)

Full archive of reviews of shows in London since 1981; held at the Theatre Museum, Covent Garden, London. Locate shows by date of performance in London, irrespective of where they previewed. Publicity stills and other material can be viewed by arrangement with the Education office of the museum.

For example:

1988, September; publicity materials and collected reviews of the London performances of Nancy Meckler’s production of The Bacchae with Shared Experience.
See also 1998, October 21, for a review of Purcarete's Oresteia.

[Return to top]

Modern Drama

As the title suggests, this is a good place to look for essays on modern versions of Greek texts, or on modern theatre responses to ancient drama.

Vol. 33, n. 1, March 1990; in ‘Drama East and West’, Martha Johnson Bancroft, ‘Reflections of Inner Life: Masks and Masked Acting in Ancient Greek Tragedy and Japanese Noh Drama’. (Useful bibliographic notes, spanning Noh theatre and Greek tragedy.)

Vol. 35, n. 3, September 1992, 409-24; Alison Hersh,’ "How sweet the kill’: Orgiastic Female Violence in Contemporary Re-visions of Euripides’ Bacchae". In particular, Maureen Duffy’s Rites and Caryl Churchill’s A Mouthful of Birds. Gender issues.

Vol 38, n. 4, Winter 1995, 510-19; Joe Winston, ‘Re-casting the Phaedra Syndrome: Myth and Morality in Timberlake Wertenbaker’s The Love of the Nightingale.’

Vol. 39, 1996, 190-210; Lizbeth Goodman, ‘Who’s Looking at Who(m)?: Re-viewing Medusa’. (‘Medusa as a lesbian theatre-maker’ - Medusa as a metaphor for the transformative power of women. Refers to Ithaka (1989), by Nina Rapi, and Medusa (1993), a one-woman performance piece by Dorothea Smartt. Gender issues.)

Vol. 41, n. 1, Spring 1998,

(a) 105-18; Mervin McMurty, ‘"Greeks Bearing Gifts; Athol Fugard’s Orestes Project and the politics of experience’. (Detailed and fascinating account of Fugard’s creation of his 1971 Orestes. Includes much material from Fugard’s own production diary. Particularly useful as there is no extant performance text of the play.)

(b)Colin Teevan, 'Northern Ireland : Our Troy?' With reference to his production of Iphigenia(DB no. 999)

[Return to top]

New Theatre Quarterly (UK)

Previously called Theatre Quarterly. A treasure-house of essays on all aspects of theatre, interviews with practitioners, and occasional illustrations. In collected editions there is an index at the end of Vol. XV

Vol. IV, n.13, February 1988, 3-16, Geraldine Cousin’s interview with Caryl Churchill, ‘The Common Imagination and the Individual Voice’. (Includes a section on A Mouthful of Birds about possession and transexuality, and talks about collaborative working. Churchill says: "We weren’t thinking all that much of the play, more of the story which Euripides was using." Gender issues.)

Vol. IV, n. 16, November 1988, 321-5; Paola Polesso, ‘Searching for a Satyr Play: the significance of the "parodos"’. (Compares the parodos of Sophocles’ The Searching Satyrs to the choral entrance in Aristophanes’ Acharnians. Includes Polesso’s own translation of part of The Searching Satyrs, because: ‘I was unable to find a literal translation in English of this rather fragmentary part of the Sophoclean text’.)

Vol. V, n. 19, 264; ‘The Bite of the Night’. (Brief account of a rehearsed reading of this Howard Barker play at the Almeida, with Ian McDiarmid as the choric figure of MacLuby. The play was commissioned but not performed by the Royal Court Theatre, being staged at the Pit Theatre at the Barbican. It was set in the ruins of Troy and in a modern day university, and juxtaposed two kinds of cultural disintegration.)

Vol. VII, n. 25, February 1991; Günther Klotz, ‘Howard Barker: Paradigm of Postmodernism’. (A review-survey of two of Barker’s plays: The Last Supper and The Bite of the Night.)

Vol. VII, n. 27, August 1991, 238-45, Sue-Ellen Case, ‘The Power of Sex: English Plays by Women 1958-88’. (Discussion of Wertenbaker’s The Love of the Nightingale as a feminist critique of rape, and of Churchill’s A Mouthful of Birds as an investigation of sexual preference and sexual difference.)

Vol. VIII, n. 32, November 1992, 389ff., Peter Barnes, ‘Working with Yukio Ninagawa’. (Includes discussion of Ninagawa’s ‘samurai’ productions of Macbeth and The Tempest as well as of his Medea (the hit of the 1986 Edinburgh Festival) and Oedipus Rex with a chorus of 160.)

Vol. IX, n.34, 1993, 107-9; Jan Kott, ‘Why did Antigone kill herself?’ (Alienation and victimisation from Sophocles to the twentieth century.)

Vol. IX, n.35, August 1993, 267-89, Susan Carlson, ‘Issues of Identity, Nationality and Performance: the reception of two plays by Timberlake Wertenbaker’. (The two plays are Our Country’s Good and The Love of the Nightingale’.)

Vol. IX, n. 36, November 1993:

a) 316-28, Leslie Du S. Read, ‘Social Space in Ancient Theatres’.

b) 357-66, Lizbeth Goodman, ‘Theatres of Choice’ [mentions Lysistrata]

Vol X, n. 40, November 1994,

a ) 327-30, Anna Krajewska-Wieczorek, ‘Two Contemporary Antigones’. (An account of two versions loosely based on the Antigone myth: Griselda Gambaro’s Antigone Furiosa (September 1986, Goethe Institute, Buenos Aires) and Janusz Glowacki’s Antigone in New York (March 1993, Arena Theatre, Washington). Helpfully descriptive.)

b) On p. 381, a photograph of Jan Kott directing Euripides’ Orestes at the University Theatre, Berkeley, in 1968. (This NTQ is a Jan Kott Eightieth birthday celebration issue - a mini-festschrift, with tributes and essays by Eugenio Barba, Peter Brook, Charles Marowitz, Stanley Wells, Martin Esslin, and others.)

Vol. XIII, n.50, May 1997, 133-43; Carol Chillington Rutter, ‘Harrison, Herakles, and Wailing Women: "Labourers" at Delphi’. (An account of the one-off performance of ‘The Labourers [sic] of Herakles’ for the 8th International Meeting on Ancient Greek Drama at Delphi.)

Vol. XV, n. 58, May 1999, 142-64, Catherine Diamond, ‘The Floating World of Nouveau Chinoiserie: Asian Orientalist Productions of Greek Tragedy’. (Survey of three non-English, non-Greek language versions of Greek originals - two of the Bacchae, one of the Oresteia. Productions were in 1995 (Taipei), 1997 (Kuala Lumpur) and 1998 (Hong Kong). The Oresteia (1995, in Taipei) was by Contemporary Legend Theatre in collaboration with invited director, Richard Schechner.)

Vol XV, n.60, November 1999, 332-38, David Roberts, ‘Making the Words Count: Towards an Analytical Database of Theatre Reviews’. (Computerizing the critics and what it tells us about their methods.)

Nigeria Magazine (Nigeria)

Vol. 151, 1984, 88-92, Teresa U. Njoko, ‘The Influence of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex on Rotimi’s The Gods Are Not to Blame’.

[Return to top]

Omnibus (UK)

A lively and well illustrated bi-annual journal produced by the Joint Association of Classical Teachers for senior school students and undergraduates.

Vol. 26 1993, Doran Gregory 'Staging the Odyssey', on his own production of Derek Walcott's Odyssey. (DB no.845)

Open University : The Reception of the Texts and Images of Ancient Greece in Late Twentieth-Century Drama and Poetry in English Project

The Project Website contains a searchable database which gives access to details of productions of Ancient Greek plays, performed in English, since 1975.

1998 (-ongoing), Lorna Hardwick, Project Database, published electronically : http://www2.open.ac.uk/ClassicalStudies/GreekPlays

1996, The Reception of Classical Texts and Images Online papers from a two-day international Conference held at the Open University. http://www2.open.ac.uk/ClassicalStudies/GreekPlays/conf96/ccfrontpage.htm

1999, Online papers from The Open Colloquium Tony Harrison's Poetry Drama and Film : The Classical Dimension http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/Colq99/

1999, Theatre : Ancient and Modern Online papers from a two-day international Conference held at the Open University. http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/CC99/

Oxford University : Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama

The purpose of the Archive is both to serve as a repository of physical materials relating to the stage history of the works in performance, such as playbills, programmes, reviews, drawings, photographs and audio-visual recordings, and also to compile a comprehensive production history of ancient drama on the modern stage in the form of a fully searchable relational database. http://www.apgrd.ox.ac.uk/

[Return to top]

Performing Arts Journal (US)

Vol. 6, n. 3, 1982, 67-86, Gautam Dasgupta, ‘Ariane Mnouchkine’.

Vol. 10 n. 1, 1986, 50-54, Mark Robinson 'Antigone'. A review of Sophocles' Antigone1986 (dir. Andrzej Wajda, performed at the Stary Theatre, Krakow).

Vol. 45, n. 15 (3), September 1993:

a) 1-28, John Chioles, ‘The Oresteia and the Avant-Garde: Three Decades of Discourse’. (Mnouchkine’s Les Atrides is the core production, with references/ comparisons to those by Peter Hall, Peter Stein and Karolos Koun. b/w production photos)

b) 29-79, Charles L. Mee’s playtext version of Euripides’ Orestes

Also, from the PAJ 'Casebook' series, 1986 : Alcestis. The Casebook, based on interviews taped by Elinor Fuchs, includes comments from all involved in Robert Hyde Wilson's 1986 production. Includes an excerpt (Scene 2), and cast list.

Plays (US)

This journal is full-text available on EBSCO, and gives the playtexts of new works. The archive is searchable by keywords.

Plays and Players (UK)

Monthly publication. Founded 1953; published until 1981 by Hansom Books, and included playtexts of new and unpublished plays. Closed briefly in 1981 and reopened in October 1981 under Brevet Publishing Ltd, and later transferred to Plusloop Ltd. Both versions include reviews, listings, and short articles. The earlier sequence was the more academic and carried articles and reviews by, e.g., Martin Esslin, Michael Coveney, B. A. Young and John Russell Taylor, as well as numerous excellent photographs, and cast lists. The post-1981 publication has fewer illustrations, and seems pitched at a less academic audience. It provides reviews, interviews, listings of current productions and biographical materials. For reviews of productions, check issues of the month after the opening.

1969 (between March and October), 57-66, full playtext of Maureen Duffy’s Rites (A version of the Bacchae. It was published by Methuen in the autumn of 1969. Full cast list.)

November 1972:

a)37-8, James Roose-Evans, ‘The Opened Box: James Roose-Evans explores the Oedipus myth in relation to his current production’. (Oedipus Now developed from workshop improvisations at the Hampstead Theatre Club and from a 1971 production for the Contemporary Greek Theatre in Athens. This article carries two costume designs and a b/w photo.)

b) 47-8, Peter Ansorge’s review of Luca Ronconi’s production of the Oresteia for the sixth Belgrade festival (BITEF 6), with two b/w photos.

October 1973, 58-9, John Lahr reviews Wole Soyinka’s The Bacchae of Euripides: A Communion Rite at the National Theatre (The Old Vic). (Full cast list and three b/w photos. Lahr’s review characterises the production as ‘another example of Eros denied’. Commends John Shrapnel’s Pentheus as ‘the only performance that rises to the level of competence’, but really blames Soyinka, not the performers, for this ‘tragedy turned into tract’.)

January 1979, 44-9, playtext of David Rudkin’s Hippolytus (Part I)

February 1979, 44-9, playtext of Hippolytus (Part II). Also, (pages 18-9), a review by Jeremy Treglown of the December 1978 production of the play at The Other Place by the RSC. (In the February issue there are in all four b/w photos. The review is critical of Ron Daniels’ directorial decisions, but positive about the acting. Full cast list.)

January 1980, preview of the RSC production The Greeks.

February 1980, review by Peter Stothard of John Barton and Kenneth Cavander’s The Greeks. (Mention made of Peter Hall’s intentions for an Oresteia. Several b/w photos.)

January 1982, 22-5, review by Martin Esslin of Peter Hall’s production of Tony Harrison’s translation of the Oresteia. (Intelligent review which registers the value of Hall’s experiment, but suggests a personal resistance to it. Esslin doesn’t like Harrison’s reconstruction of an antique language or his occasionally demotic vocabulary. Four excellent b/w photos, plus the colour picture of the Eumenides on the cover.)

February 1982, ‘More Music Men’ - material on Harrison Birtwistle’s music for Peter Hall’s 1981 Oresteia.

September 1983, 'Behind the Fringe'. Brief "Behind the Fringe" item and interview with Timberlake Wertenbaker when she was working with the theatre company, Shared Experience, as resident writer.

May - September 1993, series of articles by Sophie Back, ‘A Rough Guide to Greek Theatre’. (A very rough guide: some irritating howlers (Oedipus credited with giving birth to four children, for example), and an over-popularising tone. However, this series indicates that the journal’s editors felt there was a need for some audience-friendly programme notes about Greek drama; listings for this year show a Lysistrata on tour, and Purcarete’s Phaedra and Peter Stein’s Persians at the Edinburgh Festival.)

June 1991:

a) 24, review by Joe Farrall of O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra, at the Citizens Theatre, April 1991. (Includes cast list and one b/w photo of Glenda Jackson (Christine Mannon) and Gerard Murphy (doubling as Ezra and Orin Mannon). Informative.)

b) 36, review by Graham Hassell of Heaney’s The Cure at Troy, at the Tricycle Theatre. (Descriptive details, cast list, and one b/w photo of Des McAleer’s Philoctetes, in this Field Day production, directed by Stephen Rae and Bob Crowley.)

November 1991, 11-13, ‘What Katie Does’, interview with Katie Mitchell. (Mitchell had just directed Women of Troy at the Old Red Lion and the Gate Theatre in London, with Classics on a Shoestring company.)

September 1992, 96-7, Carole Woddis, ‘Les Atrides’. More than just a review; a subjective response and an evocation of the experience of this ‘test of endurance’ - Ariane Mnouchkine’s version of the Oresteia at Robin Mills in Bradford, July 1992.]

Plays International (UK)

Reviews, listings, interviews and playtexts. The magazine has reviewers in North America, Europe and Australia, and often includes coverage of (British) T.V. radio, film, and major drama festivals. For reviews of productions, check issues of the month after the opening.

Vol. 3 n. 12, July 1988, 14-5, Steven Berkoff in interview with Mark Shenton. (As well as retrospection on Berkoff’s past work, this interview carries some insights into Berkoff’s attitudes to theatre work, and some information about the production of his 1979 reworking of the Oedipus myth: Greek. One b/w photo of the Greek company.)

Vol. 4 n. 3, October 1988, 24-6, Oscar Moore’s review of Howard Barker’s The Bite of the Night. (An outstandingly damning review: when Moore describes Barker as: ‘a writer possessed of a great well of imaginative vitriol whose depths he plumbs with heavy slop buckets’, he could be writing about his own review of the play. It is, nonetheless, a review which is informed and informative, and makes positive comparison with Berkoff’s Greek. Two b/w photos - one of ‘The mutilated Helen of Troy’.)

Vol. 4 n. 7, February 1989, 25-6, Ned Chaillet, review of Sophocles’ Electra at The Pit. (In addition to reviewing Fiona Shaw in this RSC production, directed by Deborah Warner, Chaillet surveys the ancient Greek presence in recent theatre, noting that: ‘in recent years the Greek dramatists have become theatrical barometers of social change’. 1 b/w photo.

Vol. 13 n. 5, January/February 1998, 12-4, M. K. MacMurraugh-Kavanagh,‘Myth-making and Myth-breaking’. An interview with Peter Shaffer. (The second part of an interview begun in the December 1997 issue. In this part, Shaffer talks about The Gift of the Gorgon (1992, reviewed in, e.g. Plays & Players February 1993). He says he was perhaps ‘muddying the waters’ by adding the Perseus myth to the play’s basic story source, the Agamemnon.)

Vol. 15 n. 3, December 1999, 42-6, full playtext of Maggie Rose’s English translation of Paolo Puppa’s The Minotaur. (Paolo Puppa is Professor of History of Theatre at Venice’s Ca’ Foscari University, and this monologue (which won the Monologue Prize at Perugia’s Monte di Vibio Theatre festival) belongs ‘to a series of ancient myths Puppa rewrote in a modern and grotesque translation to reflect a time when the ancient Gods are dead and seem to hide in the shadow of their memory’(P.I., 42). This reader (RMH) found it a rather unsavoury piece (over-simplistic use of masturbation as an image of self-absorption in response to rejection), but it may work better in performance. There are echoes in this play of Sarah Kane’s Phaedra’s Love (1996).)

[Return to top]

Royal Shakespeare Company Magazine(UK)

The publicity ‘fanzine’ for the RSC, this is chiefly to be valued for its photographs, many of them in colour. Chatty style, but occasional useful insights into planning and production at the RSC.

Issue 5, Spring 1992, 18-9, Oliver Taplin, ‘It’s All Greek?’, on ancient Greece in a modern world, and (20-1), Gregory Doran on directing Derek Walcott’s version of the Odyssey. Five small colour and one b/w photos of the RSC Theban Plays. Taplin briefly surveys Greek drama in contemporary theatre, and, via Walcott’s Omeros, introduces Doran’s account of the staging of Walcott’s Odyssey.)

Issue 6, Autumn 1992, 4-5, ‘Sophocles and Sainsbury’s: the RSC’s Antigones Project’. (Gives a general rationale, but mostly about the Cornish workshops, with Nick Darke and Michael Shepherd leading.)]

Issue 12, Autumn 1995, 20-1, J. Michael Walton, ‘One Blood, One Race’. (Mostly reprinted from Walton’s introduction to Methuen’s Euripides: Volume I, but with two b/w photos of Katie Mitchell’s production of The Phoenician Women at The Other Place, Stratford.)

Issue 18, Summer 1999, 8-9, ‘Transforming a Classic’. Simon Reade on the staging of Ted Hughes’ Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’ in The Swan, Stratford. (Ten small coloured photos, which give a good indication of the overall design of the production.)

RSC Archive at the Shakespeare Centre Library (UK)

The Review Books are not published, but are available for consultation by arrangement with the Shakespeare Centre Library, Stratford-upon-Avon. These collections of reviews bring together critiques of RSC productions from national and regional newspapers and journals. Search by year and months of opening in Stratford or London. For example:

August - December 1992, reviews and photos of The Thebans (Timberlake Wertenbaker’s translation) at the Swan Theatre December 1991-January 1992.

Prompt/production copies and photos of productions can also be viewed by arrangement. Of particular interest are the MSS of playtexts which were specially commissioned for the RSC - for example:

David Rudkin’s Hippolytus: A Realisation (November1978, at The Other Place, Stratford. See also Plays & Players, January & February 1979.)

[Return to top]

South African Theatre Journal (SA)

Vol. 2, 1997

(a) 55-87, Yvonne Banning, '(Re)Viewing Medea : cultural perceptions and gendered consciousness in reviewers' responses to new South African theatre' . Includes discussion of A South African Medea (Mark Fleishman), performed in 1994 (DB no. 827)

(b) 199 -215, Mark Fleishman 'Physical Images in the South African Theatre' on his production of A South African Medea (DB no. 827)

Syllecta Classica

Vol. 10, 1999, Gamel, Mary-Kay, 'Staging Ancient Drama: the Difference Women Make'.

Vol. 10, 1999, Hazel , Ruth, 'Unsuitable for Women and Children?: Greek Tragedies in Modern British Theaters'

[Return to top]

Text and Presentation: The Journal of the Comparative Drama Conference (US)

Vol. 11, 1991, 19-24, William K. Freiert, ‘Timeless Oedipus: "The Primitive" in Three Modern Adaptations’. (Interest here lies in the contrast/comparison of different art forms: Anthony Burgess’s novels (Burgess collaborated on the 1972 second Guthrie production); Martha Graham’s ‘Night Journey’, Olawale Rotimi’s play The Gods Are Not to Blame, and Tyrone Guthrie’s production of Oedipus Tyrannus.)

Vol. 8, 1992, 45-51, Joseph Rice, ‘The Blinding of Mannon House: O’Neill, Electra and Oedipus’. (Mourning Becomes Electra; discussion of the facial expression as mask.)

The Drama Review (TDR) (US)

Full text searchable since 1997 through EBSCO.

Vol. 13, n. 3, Spring, 1969, 156ff, Stefan Brech, ‘Dionysus in 69’. (A review of Richard Schechner’s radical and often outraging version of the Bacchae.)

Vol 37, n. 1, Spring 1993, Eelka Lampe, ‘Tadashi Suzuki and Anne Bogart’s Saratoga International Theatre Institute’.

Account of the Saratoga experiments in theatre; includes information on Bogart’s version of Orestes and on Suzuki’s Dionysus.]

Vol 38, n. 3, Fall, 1994, Sally Goetsch, ‘Playing Against the Text; Les Atrides and the History of Reading Aeschylus’.

Vol. 41, n. 2, Summer 1997, 153-6; Richard Schechner reviewing Bharat Gupt’s Dramatic concepts Greek and Indian: A Study of Poetics and Natyasastra. (Schechner gives a very full and enthusiastic review of this work, recommending it for inclusion in courses on cross-cultural performance theories and comparative theatre.)

The Furrow (IRL)

1985, Vol. 36, no. 4, 244-249; Kevin Barry, 'Cinema and Feminisim : The case of Anne Devlin' (DB no 284)

Theater (US)

Volume II no.3, Summer 1980,

(a)16-17; 'Translator's Memo to the Director'. From William Arrowsmith (translator of Euripides at Bay (DB no 955) based on Thesmophoriazousae, to James Malcolm, Director, on : 'Agathon's choral song and the "New Music" '. Excerpt of the text of Arrowsmith's translation pp 7-15.

(b)19-21; Rustom Bharucha, 'Directing the Greeks' (discusses a production of Euripides at Bay.

(c) 33-35; John Barton 'Notes on the Greeks' In his article Barton questions some of the stage traditions relating to Greek tragedy and suggests how Greek tragedy should be performed today. Makes reference to the RSC's production of 'The Greeks'.

(d) 37-42; ' John Barton Directs 'The Greeks''. Richard Beacham attempts to answer the question 'Do we need Greek drama?'. (See DB no. 138)

(e) 49-53; 'Peter Arnott's Marionettes and The Bacchae'. Discussion of Marionettes in modern productions of Greek tragedy.

(f) 55-58; 'Antigone in Calcutta : A Director's Notes'. An account of the production of Antigone in Calcutta, by the Director, Hansgunther Heyme. Includes a photograph of the Chorus.

Theater Three: A Journal of Theater and Drama of the Modern World (US)

n. 3, Fall 1987, 71-4, David Carpenter, ‘Peter Brook’s Mahabharata’. (Interesting, not for any obvious ancient Greek connections, but because it discusses the problems of cultural importation: taking a 2500 year-old Sanskrit epic text from its traditional setting and developing it through various cultural contexts. Worth comparing with, e.g. Christopher Logue’s narrative performance version of parts of the Iliad and Derek Walcott’s performance version of the Odyssey.)

n.8, Spring 1990, 69-74, Constance Valis Hill, ‘Acting and the Neutral Mask: Mastering the Silent Moment’. (About Pierre LeFevre’s work on masks with students at the Julliard School.)

Theatre (UK)

First issue Sept/October 1995. Sub-titled: ‘The magazine for theatre-lovers everywhere’, this verges on being a ‘luvvies’ fanzine’. It has U.K. listings, brief reviews and colour as well as b/w photos. It also has one-off articles on theatre in the U.K. regions, profiles on individual theatre figures - mostly actors - and items on different aspects of theatre: opera, pantomime, music, wig/make-up; touring, etc.

March/April 1996, 31, Timothy Ramsden review of the Kaboodle touring company production of the Bacchae. Informative detail; sadly, no pictures.

Theatre Annual: A Journal of Performance (US)

Vol 42, 1987,

a)1-16, Johannes Birringer, ‘Brecht and Medea: Heinrich Müller’s Synthetic Fragments’.

b)53-60, Robert Stanton, ‘A defence of the ‘deus ex machina’ in Euripides’ Orestes’.

Vol 50, 1997, Ronald W. Vince, ‘The Ritual and Performative Basis of Greek Combat Sport and Hoplite Warfare’.

Theatre Arts (US, NY, 1916-64)

This review article from a now extinct journal is included because it relates to the first production of Jeffers’ version of Medea - a version which continues to be favoured for performance in the US.

31: 12, December 1947, 36, ‘John Gielgud and Judith Anderson in Medea’ (review).

Theatre Crafts International (TCI) (US)

Searchable since 1997 on EBSCO. Abstracts/ brief information. As its title suggests, this magazine is predominantly concerned with the technical and practical aspects of stage and screen production and has valuable photographic evidence of design. This publication was renamed Entertainment Design in January 1999.

Vol. 28, Issue 5, May 1994, 12, Edward Karam, ‘High Priestess’. (Design and production of the opera Iphigenie en Tauride. Priestess Iphigenia seven foot tall with shaved head; description of other costumes; side flats decorated with capillaries in red and blue-green; Surrealism in Act Three.)

Vol. 28, Issue 7, Aug-September 1994, 10, Albert Lampert-Greaux, ‘Terrors From the Greek’. Report on the Broadway production of Medea (Diana Rigg as Medea). (Information about set design by Peter J. Davidson; colour theme; mechanical working of set; costumes; construction of steel walls.)

Vol. 29, Issue 1, January 1995, 9, Glenn Loney, ‘Edinburgh Festival’ (Reports on set designs at the 1994 Edinburgh Festival, including Peter Stein’s Oresteia. Two colour photos)

Vol. 29, Issue 4, 7, ‘D. B.’, ‘War Widows’. (Report on the design for Ellen McLaughlin’s play Iphigenia and Other Daughters. Set designer Narelle Sisson’s white set with use of see-through black scrim for third play (Iph. at Tauris); strapping of women characters; Sisson’s design collaborators. 1 b/w photo.)

Theatre Forum (US)

Contents listing searchable at Theatre Forum Homepage

Issue 1, Marianne McDonald, ‘The Atrocities of Les Atrides: Mnouchkine’s Tragic Vision’.

Issue 2, Marianne McDonald, The Menace of the Eumenides: Midnight Madness in Montpellier’.

Theatre Ireland (IRL)

Vol. 7, Autumn 1984; Aidan Carl Mathews, 'The Antigone'.

Theatre Journal

Searchable since 1996 through JHUP and NESLI, or on the web at the Journal homepage.

XXXVII, 1985, 317-27, Sue-Ellen Case, ‘Classic Drag: the Greek creation of female parts’.

XL, n. 2 1988, c. 200, Elin Diamond, ‘(In)Visible Bodies in Churchill’s Theatre’. (Includes discussion of A Mouthful of Birds - Churchill’s version of the Bacchae.)

XLI, 1989, 316-40, M. Damen, ‘Actor and Character in Greek Tragedy’.

49.1 (1997), 65-7, review of Rita Dove’s The Darker Face of the Earth at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival

52.1 (2000), 115-6, Patricia Herrera’s review of the July 1999 N.Y.Urban Youth Theatre production of Minotaur: or The King’s Bull, by Jonathon Ward.

54.1 (2002), 143-5, Helene P. Foley reviews Kenneth Cavander's Agamemnon and his daughters. Review includes photograph by Stan Barouh of Agamemnon (Jack Willis) and Klytemnestra (Gail Grato)

Theatre Notebook (The Society for Theatre Research) (UK)

Vol. 45, 1991, 2-16; Alan Hughes, ‘Acting Style in the Ancient World’. (While acknowledging the work of Pickard-Cambridge and Oliver Taplin, Hughes laments the neglect of ‘major research opportunities in Greek and Roman acting styles’. He looks at documents, texts, anecdotes and visual evidence.)

Theatre Quarterly (Original title of New Theatre Quarterly listed above)

Vol. 8, n. 32, 1979, 3-6, Athol Fugard; ‘Orestes Reconstructed: a Letter to an American Friend’. (No playtext of Fugard’s Orestes exists, but this article provides details about the play’s construction and production. See DB no 2502 for details of a performance by Fugard and three actors using mime and visual images in Cape Town, SA, 1971).

Theatre Research International (TRI) (UK)

A wide-ranging, scholarly, but essentially practice-based journal.

Vol. 12, 1987, 71, Brian Crow, ‘Soyinka and his radical critics: a review’. (See DB no. 118 for details of Soyinka's The Bacchae of Euripides : a communion rite)

Vol. 13, n. 2, Summer 1988, 131- 46, Dwora Gilula, ‘The First Greek Drama on the Hebrew Stage: Tyrone Guthrie’s Oedipus Rex at the Habima’.

Vol. 16, n.3, 1991, 181-201, Clifford Ashby, ‘The Siting of Greek Theatres’. (Calls for a ‘practical nuts and bolts approach to Greek theatre’, on the lines of work being done at that time on triremes.)

Vol. 17, n. 1, 1992, 2-7; Clifford Ashby, ‘Did the Greeks Really Get to the Theatre before Dawn - Three Days Running?’ (A challenge to the accepted assumptions about Greek theatre, and specially about dawn starts to the drama festival days.)

Vol. 22, n. 1, Spring 1997, 19-23, Brian Singleton, ‘Receiving Les Atrides’ Productively: Mnouchkine’s Intercultural Signs as Intertexts’. (A good deal of information about setting and performance of Les Atrides. Linguistically, a surfeit of ‘inter’s - e.g.: ‘The intercultural sign used intertextually was a cohesive device, created and performed by the one culture system. The intertextual reading of the intercultural sign, therefore, made that sign monocultural.’)

Vol. 23, n. 1, 1998, 69-78; Michael X. Zelenak, ‘The Troublesome Reign of King Oedipus: Civic Discourse and Civil Discord in Greek Tragedy’.

Vol. 23, n. 3, 242-48; Sandra Freeman, ‘Bisexuality in Cixous’s Le Nom d’Oedipe’ (Discussion of Jocasta’s song in the opera Le Nom d’Oedipe.)

Theatre Studies (Journal of the Ohio State University Theatre Research Institute) (US)

Vols 28-9, 1981-2, 59-72; Dave Anderson, ‘Spartan Masks’. (Argues for more consideration of a Spartan debt to Greek theatre. Evidence of Spartan terracotta masks.)

Classical Receptions in Drama and Poetry in English from c.1970 to the Present

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THEATRE JOURNALS, PERIODICALS AND OTHER RESOURCES

Classical and Modern Literature (CML) (US)

Comparative Drama (US)

Plays and Players (UK)

Theatre Crafts International (TCI) (US)

Theatre Quarterly (Original title of New Theatre Quarterly listed above)

Classical Receptions in Drama and Poetry in English
from c.1970 to the Present