Abjected Arcadias: Images of Classical Greece and Rome in Barrie Kosky's 'Oedipus', 'The Lost Echo' and 'The Women of Troy'

Abstract

The name "Arcadia" has a seductive sound. From Virgil via Sir Philip Sidney to Tom Stoppard, through high art and popular fiction, it evokes an idyllic setting characterised by harmony and delight, a scene of youth, perpetual good health and abundance, where the greatest grief is occasioned by unrequited affection and expressed in the lamentations of the disappointed lover. Twenty-first-century drama has its citified and suburban versions of this idyllic but nevertheless anxious classical world – but they are now called sitcom and soap, the worlds of 'Friends' and 'Neighbours'. But when theatre in Sydney, over the past few years, has turned back to the classical tradition, it is not this gentle, bucolic version of antiquity that it has chosen to share with audiences; Australian theatregoers have been presented instead with images of the ancient Greek and Roman periods characterised by violence, brutality, deception, conspiracy, cruelty, torture, hatred, disharmony, the capricious abuse of power, and blood – buckets and buckets of blood. The image of antiquity presented by these theatrical events is more the version we know from intrigue-laden texts like Shakespeare's 'Julius Caesar', the televised adaptation of Robert Graves's 'I Claudius' and the more recent BBC/HBO/RAI television series 'Rome' than pastorals depicting a golden age. The productions I am referring to here are the Sydney Theatre Company's 'Oedipus' by Seneca in the translation by Ted Hughes (2000); 'The Lost Echo' (2006) and 'The Women of Troy' (2008).