WIth less than a month to go to the triennial Oxford Greek Play (Clytemnestra, Oxford Playhouse, 6th Week), I caught up with the director (Raymond Blankenhorn), translator (Arabella Currie) and lead actress (Lucy Jackson) to discuss the project’s progress so far
The production of a play in ancient Greek may seem like one of Oxford’s more bizarre traditions but all three are Classicists and clearly passionate about the value to be gained from original language performance. ‘In the sound of words and in the metre there’s a kind of stage direction that’s been written in by Aeschylus, so getting to work so thoroughly with the Greek is wonderful,’ Raymond tells me. Lucy (who plays Clytemnestra) also talks about her realisation in rehearsal that ‘intonation and the sound of things changes what is meant.’ Rather than a dramatic oddity, the director sees finding a dramatic purpose behind the ancient Greek as his production’s central aim – it affects the pacing and rhythm of the production – but Blankenhorn’s Clytemnestra will still be very much a play, as opposed to the more operatic Agamemnon (the last Cambridge Greek Play).
That said, Raymond tells me that ‘there is a very in-depth musical soundtrack but it’s more like a soundscape, – this even includes the incorporation of dubstep into one scene. In this Greek Play, he assures me, ‘there is something for everyone.’ This sums up the inclusiveness that the production is trying to achieve – not all the actors involved had any prior knowledge of ancient Greek, in fact ‘three out of five people in the chorus don’t know any Greek’ and for some of the production crew the language ‘might as well be Klingon.’
For the audience, Arabella’s translation will be projected as surtitles, something which, she tells me, brought its own challenges: ‘I didn’t edit anything out of the Greek – it has to be pretty much word for word but the meaning has to be clear if people just glance up. We don’t want to detract from what’s going on onstage – so it’s actually made it more interesting because you’re writing for something visual.’Being part of such a long tradition potentially opens up all areas of the production to scrutiny, but, for Raymond, ‘subverting the tradition is interesting’. He contrasts his production with the ‘more archaeological approach’ of his immediate predecessors – this play will not use masks and costumes inspired by Japanese culture, with the chorus wearing Butoh-style make-up and Clytemnestra in ‘a costume which is not quite a kimono.’ The decision to change the play’s title (from the Choephori or Libation Bearers) may also be questioned by purists but all three agree that this is a minor deviation.
‘One of the most important things for the academic interest is respecting the text, so we’re not making changes to that – we’re performing the full text without any cuts – that will go some way towards justifying some of our departures.’ The project has also provided many challenges. Lucy talks about her approach to performing Clytemnestra: ‘When she speaks there are so many layers, so a lot of what I’ve been doing now is thinking and discussing – what are those layers? And, stepping outside the character of Clytemnestra, what is the meaning of the line in the context of the rest of the play?’ Raymond has been inventive in his use of the chorus – he tells me, the chorus members have come to view themselves as individuals when ‘at a conceptual level, they’re not characters – they’re not really human.’ In performance he has tried to give the chorus a sense of playfulness: ‘One thing we’ve done is randomise the lines for certain sections so they all know the lines and they have to figure out who is going to say them.’
The production looks set to be an innovative and engaging take on a play which ‘is unjustly under-studied and under-valued’. For those who watched the previous (Oxford or Cambridge) Greek Play it should be a ‘mirror up against the Agamemnon, not just a continuation of the plot’ but it is also a stand-alone piece with ‘the journey of one protagonist’ (Orestes – Jack Noutch) at its centre. Aeschylus, Arabella argues, was ‘trying to do something new with Greek, something that had never been done before’, and an opportunity to hear this in the original is not to be missed.
