Review: BACCHAE, National Theatre

Bacchae arrives trumpeting fist clenched rebellion, only to implode into hashtag politics. In remoulding crudly Euripides' tragedy into tawdry cabaret, the National Theatre has committed the deadliest artistic sin of all: cringe. 

Pentheus rules Thebes with patriarchal bluster until the Bacchae, an order of hedonistic women, arrive under the banner of demi-god Dionysus. The bones of Euripides’ tragedy are there, but the production won’t let you forget that this is an oh so radical re-telling.

Every other moment is either toilet humour or zeitgeist polemics piling up until every cultural flashpoint is ticked off neatly. The audience is prodded into Pavlovian applause by the namedrop of fashionable causes. The problem is not in its rebelliousness but in the presumption that theatrical defiance magically garners dramatic depth. First time writer Nima Taleghani mistakes crudity for courage. “lick extra virgin olive oil out my extra virgin anus” is one of toe-curling lines that wouldn’t cut it in a university sketch comedy troupe.

The consequent hodge podge of metatheatrical tones veers closer to Horrible Histories than to Greek tragedy. Frivolous songs, cartoonish costumes and exposition as heavy as concrete are delivered with a nudge-and-wink silliness that feels pillaged from CBBC. But on the hallowed Olivier stage, it curls into self-parody. By the end Dionysus, following an identity crisis, ascends in a vortex of sequins and shimmering light to Olympus as the god of theatre. Wayhay theatre! At this point the play ceases to be a play and becomes an unofficial opening ceremony for director Indhu Rubasingham, newly installed as helm of the National. For all the waxing lyrical about the power of theatre, they don’t seem to want to wield it.  

James McArdle gamely hams it up as Pentheus, a pantomime tyrant whose every other line is cartoonish toxicity, sneering at women with the depth of a cardboard cut-out easily toppled. The only flicker of dramatic life comes from Dionysus himself (a dynamic Ukweli Roach), in those brief moments when his grating swagger gives way to doubt.

Clare Perkins, meanwhile, is squandered as Vida, the Bacchae’s de facto leader. Her simmering exasperation at Dionysus’s bratty self-indulgence hints at a far more compelling conflict within the chorus. But just as it begins to ignite, the writing snuffs it out with clunky pacing and careless plotting.

Tragedy requires sharp focus. Satire requires wit. Taleghani and Rubasingham proffer neither. What remains is noisy brashness straining itself in its attempts to be something it isn’t.

Bacchae plays at the National Theatre until 1 November

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