Here is a mighty and very modern production of a very old Greek epic tragedy by Aeschylus - The Suppliants, with the recently re discovered second act tagged on. The director, Silviu Pucarete, has adapted the text and structure and has staged it with a vivid creative imagination. The result is strikingly simple and simply striking, beautifully disciplined in both voice and choreography, swirlingly impressive in its images and crystal clear in its speaking, particularly when 50 voices are raised in unison. There is reason to be very grateful to the Dublin Theatre Festival and its sponsors for enabling Dublin audiences to see this rare and magical piece of theatre.
But there are some regrets. The first and most important is that there can be only three performances (the final two are today's matinee and evening performances). The second relates to technical failures in the opening performance last night: a computer failure led to there being no English language translation available, and the amplification and loudspeaker system was not directionally placed so the audience had to search the vast stage to find which face was moving before being able to locate the actor speaking - not always easy in a cast of over 100.
These problems made it very difficult for a Dublin audience to gain access to the substance of the piece, especially since there was not enough light to scan the English language scene synopses printed in the programme.
Yet to have been trying to read the programme would have detracted from both the small and the huge visual images of the production: the gods seated sometimes dispassionately downstage right and left observing the action sometimes playing lethal games with the protagonists in the action those protagonists (the 50 daughters of Danaos fleeing from Egypt and seeking asylum, and the 50 sons of Egyptos pursuing them for rape and revenge), which provide the theatrical action of the evening.
The daughters arrive in Argos in dark blue cowls and cloaks bearing bright white suitcases which subsequently become protective walls of shelter. Their blue is shed for more virginal colours later in the action. The sons arrive in lighter, yellower, more aggressive clothing and threaten them, literally breathing fire. The stage devices (and there are many more, including a vast blue drape for the sea and clanking galvanised buckets for life saving drinking water) are wonderfully effective.
There is a sense of privilege in being enabled to see the production, even allowing for the disappointment of not being able to gain better access to its textual substance. But that diminished accessibility unfortunately led last night to the feeling that we were watching a pageant rather than experiencing a tragedy.
