While audiences and critics were split over the artistic quality of Conol Morrison’s March 2006 adaptation of Euripides's The Bacchae, renamed The Bacchae of Baghdad, most agreed that it offered Irish theatergoers the rare opportunity to see a multiethnic cast onstage at Ireland’s national theatre, a feat long overdue.  The changing demographics of Ireland in the last few years, particularly in urban centers of Dublin, Limerick and Galway, have not fully translated to consistently multi ethnic casts on Irish stages.  At the very least, one hopes that this production is the beginning of a new Irish theatrical trend.

Greek tragedies have been familiar theatrical fare for Irish theatergoers in recent years. Seamus Heaney's successful Burial at Thebes, Katie Mitchell’s Iphigenia at Aulis, and Morrison’s own adaptation of Antigone, produced by Storytellers, all offered valuable discourse on how contemporary political conflicts might be examined and illuminated through the contextual lens of Greek tragedy.  And certainly the parallels between the contemporary Iraq war and dramatic themes in Greek tragedy, particularly The Bacchae, are obvious and interesting: the clash of civilizations, the dangers of proselytizing a radicalized religion, the extreme devotion of its adherents and the contradictory aims of a secular administration to repress it.

Prior to his Bacchae of Baghdad, Morrison’s directorial work at the Abbey Theatre included numerous imaginative theatre stagings of Western canonical texts, including Hamlet, Tarry Flynn, his adaptation of Patrick Kavanagh’s novel, and an all male version of The Importance of Being Earnest (co-production with the Lyric Theatre, Belfast).  While I argue that the high expectations for Bacchae of Baghdad were not fully met, audiences were left with an uneven, though provocative production that explored the lethal force of political and religious fundamentalism. 

Designer Sabine Dargent re-imagined the Abbey proscenium as a bombed out green zone in military occupied Baghdad.  A knock off McDonald’s sign stood stage right, and a fried chicken marquee was knocked over, leaning against the ruins of a temple, signs of American corporate colonization slightly destroyed, but still stubbornly visible.   Flanking either side of the stage were iron fire escapes, where members of the female chorus delivered various speeches, and ribbons and swaths of fabric were tied to the escapes and hung to the stage floor--creating a slightly jumbled, congested urban realm of exoticized eastern imagining and encroaching western capitalism.  While the effect was more war-torn Middle East pastiche as brought to you by Epcot Center than anything else, it still adequately articulated the physical tension and destruction of cultural identity.   

In Euripides's text, the reign of Theban leader Pantheus is challenged when his cousin, Dionysus, returns to the city seeking vengeance against those who deny his half-god, half-mortal lineage. Given the title of the adaptation, it should come to no surprise that Pantheus is played as a swaggering George W. Bush figure, the head of the American military administration, with American accent and wearing a business suit with an American flag sewn onto his arm.  He is continually surrounded by earpiece and sunglass wearing secret service men. However it makes little textual sense to make Pantheus American, as it strips him of any legitimate claim on the city. This is of course the point, and Dionysus’s (Christopher Simpson) anger is directed at Pantheus and the Americans who have invaded and colonized his city. However, Pantheus being American makes the fact that he is also the son of Agave, leader of the Bacchae women, somewhat problematic.  His goal is then to displace the Bacchae despite being a direct descendant through his mother.  Questions about how he is both colonizer and native son are left largely unexplained.

Dionysus in this production is something akin to a genie, referencing a broadly imagined Middle East, with harem pants, jewel tone scarves and a questionably Rastafarian accent. He was unintentionally received comedically by the audience and while he rails on about Pantheus and his followers, the audience notes that perhaps the production staff is also guilty of not fully interrogating or understanding the Eastern identity they put onstage.

When Dionysus is arrested by Pantheus, he is brought onstage as a detainee in a prison issued Guantanamo orange jumpsuit, with his hands and feet in chains and cuffs. Because Pantheus evokes George W, one couldn’t help but wistfully imagine that perhaps W is a direct descendant of all those he wants to banish from his evangelical America. Might he be distantly related to at least one of those inmates in Guantanamo?  When Dionysus then charges the women into a Bacchanalian frenzy, the first thing they do is try and destroy the McDonald’s sign onstage, as well as other vestiges of American, or Western capitalism.

The production comes into focus late in the play, when Andrea Irvine (Agave) enters carrying her son's severed head; her portrayal of the character's return to sanity and acknowledgment of her own misguided brutality is genuinely moving, as well as frightening. Yet after Agave and the Bacchae women have been publicly punished for the murder, they return onstage in burkas.  I must admit that I found this choice a bit distracting. I can imagine that the director was arguing against extreme theocracy from both sides – but the image of women in burkas so resonated as an example of the Taliban regime that Pantheus becomes, in his death, sympathetic.  Is Dionysus, after having been detained in this Guantanamo inspired camp, now a member of the Taliban? 

The adaptation turns the tragedy into a moral play rebuking the West for their invasion of Iraq, and despite the resonating line “force alone does not rule the world,” Dionysus warns that violence will beget more violence, which given the recent crisis in Lebanon and current diplomatic tensions between the United States and Iran, rings painfully true.

This is one of several productions in which Morrison has started out with an innovative take on a classic text.  While I don’t believe he fully investigated or achieved the conceit, I am optimistic that the new Abbey, where Morrison has been named an associate artist, will allow this talented writer-director to return to what in the past has been impressive form.