APRIL 2001

 

Tantalus
Marianne McDonald, Univeristy of Californiaat San Diego

My Topic is a discussion of Sir Peter Hall's Tantalus. I would like to solicit responses from the various people who have seen the production about the following issues (or whatever else they like): quality of the text, the direction, the set, the acting, and overall evaluation. This can include comment on the ten million dollar plus budget, not counting that the largest grant in the history of England was given to this production to tour. I am reviewing Tantalus in the next issue of Arion. I wish I had ended my review with a quotation from Housman's Fragment of a Greek Tragedy which I think sums up the "idea" behind this production:

In speculation I would not willingly acquire a name For ill-digested thought, But after pondering much To this conclusion I at last have come: LIFE IS UNCERTAIN. This truth I have written deep In my reflective midriff On tablets not of wax, Nor with a pen did I inscribe it there For many reasons: life, I say, is not A STRANGER TO UNCERTAINTY. Not from the flight of omen-yelling fowls This fact did I discover, Nor did the Delphic tripod bark it out, Nor yet Dodona. Its native ingenuity sufficed My self-taught diaphragm. This play is living proof that salesmanship is alive and well, and also that cultural assassins are murdering the classics. Keeping the enormous budget in mind, I quote Pindar of Tantalus, "If the gods of Olympus honored any man, Tantalus was that one. But he could not digest his mighty wealth, and through excess, he found utter ruin," (Olympian 1. 55-6). Excess is the word that best describes this production.

Shouldn't an audience leave a theatrical performance renewed, rather than exhausted? Where is Aristotelian katharsis? Shouldn't one remember at least some story that was moving, or a character with which one could identify? What about that ethical side of Greek tragedy? What lesson was learned here? The only thing I remember from the epilogue to the performance was that the world is chaotic, and the gods more arbitrary than men. This was one of Euripides' messages. But he added redemptive factors like philia, the bond that one human being can forge with another, a friendship or love that gives meaning to life. Where is the friendship or love in this mish-mash? Where is there an idea that one is responsible for what one does, and that there will be consequences? In Tantalus, there was simply one story after another, arbitrarily linked to what had preceded. There was too much information, and too much narration. We are told what we should think at every point. What made Greek tragedy, and all good plays great is absent here.

Greek tragedy was one of the ways a citizen of Athens became a better citizen. It contributed information that could help a person live a life that is worth living, a life of quality that comes from utilizing one's skill and excellence as a compassionate human being.  Where is that transformative quality that comes from good drama, the new knowledge or experience that comes from good stories being told? Tantalus rambles on to an arbitrary ending. It does not even have the excitement of epic. It is full of sound and bluster [sic] and signifies less than nothing.

Masks were used and, as usual with Peter Hall, the result was disastrous. The addition of masks was a late one and there was obviously not enough rehearsal time. In Hall's Oresteia, with the translation by Tony Harrison, and Hall's Oedipus Plays, masks muffled the sound. They do also in Tantalus, where they also give the illusion of moustaches for both males and females. They do not allow the audience to see human expressions. I do not quarrel with masks in a mask tradition, such as the ancient Greek one or Japanese Noh.  In the latter, actors are trained very early in the use of these masks, and some of these actors are called National Treasures. You cannot expect actors and actresses to be given masks and know how to deliver a skilled performance in a six-week or even a six-month period. This is just not possible, and Peter Hall has proven it again and again.

One reviewer, Michael Phillips, got it right: "Hall's decision to play Tantalus almost entirely in masks was a major misjudgments. An hour or two into Tantalus, you wish the actors at least had mouths and jaws to call their own. No matter how determined the actors get with their final consonants, a line referring to 'a thousand ships as backup' comes out sounding like "a shoushand shidds ash beggup.'" Later he refers to the "walkie-talkie vocal quality enforced by the masks." I find the writing simplistic. The Poet in the prologue claims these plays are "lost bits." This leads to several nonstarters, such as the introduction of Electra and Aegisthus with hardly any explanation for the hatred of Electra for her mother, or for Clytemnestra's taking up with Aegisthus. Critics who have reviewed Tantalus bemoan the omission of key moments; whoever heard of omitting Agamemnon's murder when he returns from the war?

Like Euripides, but without his talent, Barton and Hall rewrite characters that usually appear differently in the myths. The idealist leader, Agamemnon, is quite likable; his only defects seem to be incest, and a taste for young girls. Barton makes him almost flawless and in his text (not followed by Hall), Agamemnon respects Cassandra, and hardly embraces her as she is trying to entice him at the end of Part II. Agamemnon sheds tears easily, over the atrocities committed at Troy, and when he's to be separated from his brother. He is a caring family man who tries to make peace, and is appalled at the army sacrificing his daughter, with his wife's encouragement. He believes in no reprisals. "What more can kings hope for? As in time I believe that in all human dealings there can also be healing. It does not take long for burned fields and vineyards to grow green and bear fruit again and so with homes and cities" (p. 349). Ask the Vietnamese about that.

Barton did not come to the opening and disowned the final product. Much of the sex and sadism are Hall additions, or perhaps his son's (also a contributor).

I particularly dislike the way women are treated. The torture and nudity seemed a bit too calculated to please an audience who grew up on Friday the Thirteenth. Sex and violence are served up with no attempt at sophistication. For instance, when the sacred serpents licked the cheeks of Helenus and Cassandra, Barton says instead "the two sacred serpents were licking our genitals: That is how we became prophets" (p. 224: Barton's published text is riddled with errors, but this is not the place to list them. Classicists have had a field day providing lists of these errors on the Web.)

The audience feasts on the sight of nude bodies, branding irons heated in the flames, and hearing the screams when they sizzle on female flesh. In fact, in ancient Greece, slaves were not branded unless they tried to escape, and then only as a punishment and to secure instant recognition (they were branded on their foreheads). This violence is historically inaccurate (as most everything in this production), but it provides a cheap dramatic titillation for those in the audience who are so inclined. The nudity in the sex scene between Agamemnon and Cassandra was rather beautiful. Two lovely bodies, and two people having consensual sex. The gusto, however, which these particular two bring to this encounter, is quite improbable from what we have been told in this text. Cassandra would hardly be Agamemnon's willing sexual partner, if she refused Apollo. The women in this play are mainly demonized. This is a common Hall manoeuvre and John Barton was a good ally. Thetis is a man and child-hating lesbian. Thetis is likewise out for vengeance. She dresses to kill. The violence of the women in this play matches, and usually surpasses, the violence of the men.

Clytemnestra is all too willing to get rid of or sacrifice her children. Agamemnon says about Iphigenia, "Maybe you do not love her as a mother should." She answers, "I love her, but not as I love you, nor as I think you love her" (p. 157). Hecuba is responsible for Paris treacherously killing Achilles (p. 246). She also convinces Priam that it is fine to bring the Trojan horse into the city (p. 250). Hecuba even urges Priam to add "Pyrrha" (Neoptolemus) to his wives: "Do what you always do: take her in as your wife" (p. 261). Most of the men here seem blameless.

Hermione is self-centered and cowardly, an appropriate offspring for the self-absorbed Helen. Helen is presented as some abstract beauty symbol, hardly emotive, swaddled in silks and masks, so all the beauty she is said to have is left to the imagination, until at one point her mask is removed and she is shown to have aged. Menelaus says he loves her still (once again the noble man, in contrast to the female chorus who make snide remarks about her appearance). Helen is finally deprived even of her weapon of beauty. She is passive, says little, and does not defend herself. She is the opposite of the Euripidean Helen in either his Trojan Women or the Helen, or even the Orestes.

In my version of the Trojan Women (performed in San Diego at the Old Globe, at the same time as Tantalus) I made Helen even feistier than Euripides did, and she flaunts her sexuality. By contrast, Hall's and Barton's "ideal" women are like Stepford wives, and freely exchanged like tokens. Maybe that is why they have to be branded, so the men can always identify their property. Odysseus claims Hecuba will be safer if she is branded. The sign of ownership offers protection. Odysseus says, "A brand's purpose is not to humiliate but to protect whoever bears it. Our soldiers are rough men but they are taught from childhood to treat brands with respect. It prevents them stealing cattle" (p. 305). Very Lévi-Straussian. The writing and the direction both contribute to some wasted hours. If only that budget could have supported some schools to include Homer in their reading list, or helped stage some Greek tragedies or comedies by the original masters, the world would have been better off. This is a monument to the vanity of an untalented few, and to the chutzpah of entrepreneurship.  Barton and Hall can be truly called the Andrew Lloyd Webbers of the classical world.

This is a Phantom of Troy, and the rock that slips is Hall's chandelier. I'm surprised he didn't put Tantalus' rock over the audience. At the end, the audience felt more like Sisyphus than Tantalus: more exhausted than tantalized.

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RESPONSE

Lorna Hardwick, The Open University, UK

Marianne's discussion of the Denver performance raises some crucial issues. Firstly, what kind of work(s) are we encountering and secondly, what is the relationship between the published text by Barton and the version staged by the Halls?

So far as the staged version is concerned, it seems that the UK production closely resembles the Denver one but with some changes necessitated by touring to different venues (e.g. reduction in video projections). There seems to be no doubt that it has been well received by large audiences and that the set and lighting design have made a big impression. The Halls have removed one of the plays completely (Erigone) and made other significant cuts (e.g. the supposed sexual experiences of Neoptolemus in the Trojan horse). More important, the tone and mood of the staging is quite noticably removed from that of Barton's text (an interesting comparison is Katie Mitchell's staging for the RNT of Ted Hughes' version of the Oresteia; this involved a directorial translation to the stage of Hughes' translation of Aeschylus). It seems that the Tanatalus production will achieve 'canonical' status and that for some time to come it will shape people's conceptions of what Greek drama is about. There, of course, lies the problem. It is not a version of Greek drama.

What kind of work is it then? In one sense it is a new work. Yet its conception is related to Barton's previous work The Greeks in that a sequence of plays purports to offer an overarching narrative. However, The Greeks was based on tragedies ( 'I believe that Greek tragedy needs a fresh look', Barton in 'Notes on the Greeks', Theater vol 2 no 3, 1980 pp 33-35). Tantalus draws on a variety of sources, including importantly the Epic Cycle. So the shaping author of Tantalus is dealing with material which is potentially incoherent, both formally and ideologically. The outcome is more like an anthology. Translation by anthology has been increasingly discussed as part of debates in Translation Studies (e.g. by Andre Lefevere in Translation, Rewriting and the Manipulation of Literary Fame, London and NY, Rouledge, 1992, and more recently in his chapter 'Translation and Canon Formation'  in (edd) R Alvarez and M Vidal, Translation, Power, Subversion, Clevedon, Philadelphia, Adelaide, Multi-Lingual Matters, 1996). Anthology places  into the canon a selection of material which aims to represent diversity alongside a sense of an overall distinctiveness in the genre or period being documented. This is quite difficult to reconcile with the type of narrative coherence in which Barton seems to be interested - 'exploration and shaping' are the words he uses in his introduction to the published text of Tantalus.

The staged version seemed to me to find difficulty in constructing narrative coherence - hence the adaptation of Barton's poet into the trinket salesman on the beach and the production's ambivalent approach to engaging the audience emotionally (Agamemnon and Cassandra - then pull the rug from the audience's response with the awful Hermione). Audience response was shaped more by design, lighting and costume than by the words and there was an odd disjunction between the lack of encouragement to the audience to get consistently involved and the claim of Alan Dobie (in an excellent and thoughtful 'talk-back' sequence after the March 1 performance) that the use of masks should actually extend the emotional range of the plays and draw the audience into supplying  depth of interpretation.

Perhaps part of the reason that Tantalus is provoking academic critics is because we don't as yet have satistactory critical tools for analysing and assessing it. Neither the printed nor the performed versions can be treated as though they were Greek tragedy. Perhaps, too, the recuperation of matters Greek into the commercial theatre presents challenges to our underlying assumptions that drama based on Greek material has always to be subversive, challenging and grand in its cultural implications. Would we react as strongly if Tantalus was just a musical?

Paul Cartledge, University of Cambridge, UK

One hesitates to take strong issue with Marianne McDonald, who both privately and publicly is a powerful supporter of the Classics and especially the dissemination of ancient Greek theatre in modern productions. But I could not disagree more with the views she has expressed about Tantalus both in print and in this electronic seminar. It is, alas, too late to prevent or influence the review she has already published in Arion. But I wish to enter a plea that any future debate at least be conducted in more temperate tones. Such shrill claims as her 'Cultural assassins are murdering the classics' and 'The audience feasts on the sight of nude bodies' are not I think calculated to produce or advance rational debate and understanding, let alone informed enjoyment.

It should not need to be pointed out that John Barton's Tantalus was not written as a 'classic', nor for that matter uniquely -  or even especially - for classicists. On the contrary. His text is an original script aimed at a broad reading and theatregoing public, based significantly not on the extant or known tragedies of the fifth century but on those tragedies' main source besides Homer, the Epic cycle.  Moreover, 'the myths' were not for the ancient Greeks the fixed entities that that phrase seems to imply. '[W]hoever heard of omitting Agamemnon's murder when he returns from the war?' seems to me to miss the (Barton's) point entirely.

The performance version of Tantalus raises further delicate issues. The reasons why Barton disowned Peter and Edward Hall's - and Colin Teevan's - text/production of Tantalus are far more complex than she seems to realise, or will allow to appear. The 'arbitrary ending' of which she complains, for example, is that of the performed version, not of the published text by the original author; and 'the Poet' she refers to is a character in Barton's text, but in the performed version he has become 'the Storyteller'. The two Tantalus are really different works. Different critical approaches are needed in analysing performances of original works, adaptations and new works respectively - as Lorna Hardwick's recent Translating Words, Translating Cultures (Duckworth 2000) exemplarily demonstrates.

Confining myself here to the performance version (or a couple of performance versions perhaps), I have to report that in my personal experience - both in Denver and during its tour in this country at Milton Keynes (it is as a contribution to a touring budget that the Arts Council gave Tantalus its largest grant to date) - audiences as a whole did actually leave the theatre renewed, and exhilarated, rather than exhausted. This was a particular thrill to me, as on the strength of the Denver reception I had agreed to contribute a programme note for the RSC tour and would have been embarrassed as well as disappointed if the plays had been the sort of flop that Ms McDonald suggests.

I could go on, but perhaps I have said enough to encourage fruitful and scholarly reflection rather than mere vituperation.

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Final Response from Topic Leader Marianne McDonald

I appreciate responses from both Paul Cartledge and Lorna Hardwick. I think there is no response to Paul Cartledge's finding my responses 'shrill', responses like 'cultural assassins are murdering the classics,' and 'the audience feasts on the sight of nude bodies.' I think this is a matter of taste, just like the evaluation of Tantalus. I had comments other than these 'shrill' ones that pointed out my specific objections, coherence being one of them, bad English another.
Yes. I agree. Tantalus is an original script, but it claims to relate to certain myths. There seems to be something oxymoronic here. Of course, I am aware of the many variations of myth in the Greek canon. But I think omitting Agamemnon's death in this cycle which deals with his 'story' and 'myth' misses several dramatic opportunities which could have enlivened what I find a rather dull and incoherent 'plot' (I use the term advisedly).
I know that the production differed from the Barton text and that it was complex. I actually did realize the complexity. But my article had to be limited. In most cases I was on Barton's side, and felt that the two Halls and Teevan made arbitrary selections and added cheap effects.
Paul Cartledge said 'audiences as a whole did actually leave the theatre renewed, and exhilarated, rather than exhausted.' I think this is a subjective assessment. I spoke to many who did not share the former feelings. He also said 'it is as a contribution to a touring budget that the Arts Council gave Tantalus its largest grant to date.' Does this mean that getting a large grant is indicative of quality? Large budgets? I could cite numerous counter examples.
Lorna Hardwick noted well the problem of coherence. I am glad she pointed out some of the differences in the UK version from the Denver one. I am amazed that Alan Dobie claimed that the masks extended the emotional range of the plays. Many reviewers over here noted how they interfered with text delivery. They seemed to pay iconic homage to the 'classics,' but hindered the dramatic values.
I like Lorna's question 'Would we react as strongly if Tantalus was just a musical?'. That would have made it simple for me. I probably would not have gone to have seen it and certainly would not have reviewed it.
My thanks both to Paul Cartledge and Lorna Hardwick for contributing in such a fruitful way to this exchange.