Review: EGYPTIANS, Gulbenkian Arts Centre, University of Kent

2500 years is (obviously!) a long time, so Aeschylus has had plenty of opportunity to reflect on his legacy and see his works adapted, reimagined or, in this case, created from scratch. With the fidelity shown to his spirit in this production, he can continue to rest easy in his grave.

David Greig, John Browne, Ramin Gray and Sasha Milavic Davies have conjured a lost play, Egyptians, drawing on his themes and present a tale that has one foot in the sandals and wine of millennia past and another in the Birkenstocks and prosecco of today. Though times, gods and languages may change, people carry the same DNA - and, sometimes, it shows.

Having won a war, Egyptian soldiers demand to marry the fifty daughters of Danaos. Maintaining populations was critical for defence and the economy back then - these days, the demand might be for fifty oilwells. But the women seek sanctuary in Argos and the protection of the gods, mediated by a priestess and must deal with the wrath of a grieving mother. And so an invading force finds that military success, far from being an ending, is merely the start of another battle, one for which soldiers are not best suited. Iraq anyone?

With a set modeled on an amphitheatre and a prologue that, as would have been the case in Aeschylus's time, thanks the financial backers and then propitiates the gods, we have one foot firmly placed in classical times. That vibe is driven home by much of the storytelling being done by a chorus of volunteer actors, playing the soldiers thwarted in their desire for brides. But nobody is wearing ancient dress nor swanning about like Socrates - the play is contemporary in its vocabulary and its energy, reminding us of our cultural and moral connections to those early experiments in civil society. And of its, and hence our, fragility.

With verse an important component of the play (though the chorus's chanted elements of the script did get a little lost in the large auditorium) and Callum Armstrong and Ben Burton's music driving the narrative at least as much as the words, Egyptians is a unique theatrical experience, closer to opera than conventional drama. If the machinations between soldiers, a grieving mother and a priestess become a little convoluted at times, this production is never less than interesting and a fascinating glimpse of what it must have been like to watch drama all those years ago.

Egyptians was at the Gulbenkian Arts Centre

Photo Credit: The Danaid Project

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