The Oresteia: The Eumenides (Peter Hall , 1983)

 "They're learning to bless, groping for goodness."

The final instalment of The Oresteia is, of course, what gives it its thematic power: the cycle of endless power can only be broken by justice, by the rational weighing of evidence rather than hot-headed revenge, an eye for an eye until everyone is blind. There's a lot of weight to a literary work so old as this which seems to articulate, and with such exquisite prose, such a fundamental tenet of civilisation- although, perhaps, we should try not to dwell too hard on the misogyny on display here, especially the belief that patricide trumps matricide because he father is "the only true parent"and mothers do not pass on anything, only acting as the vessel. This may have been widely believed, or so we're told, but presumably by those who happen never to have noticed the extremely common phenomenon of children who resemble their mother.

Still, this is a superlative translation, a superlative score, and a superlative production, for all the reasons previously mentioned. This time we get to dwell on Tony Harrison's depiction and descriptions of the main Greek gods, and it's amazing.

It's hard to see how any other production of this trilogy can match this one. The authentic style and Harrison's gloriously earthy translation combine to make something intoxicating.

The Oresteia: The Libation Bearers (Peter Hall, 1983)

 "Bloodshed for bloodshed, keeping the blades red..."

And so Peter Hall's version of Tony Harrison's translation of the Oresteia trilogy continues, in similar vein, with masked actors who would have been bloody terrifying to any children watching. It is, of course, no less sublime than the first part.

The Libation Bearers is quite simple plot-wise: Orestes returns to plot with Electra, and gets into the palace by deceit where he promptly offs Aegisthus and then his mother, and the Furies are a bit miffed. That's it. It's basically Hamlet with added matricide and much less faffing about although, of course, in the case of Hamlet the whole point is the faffing about.Yet as ever it's not so much the plot as the philosophical and imagery-strewn verse that is the point, again translated by Harrison in a way that evokes, to me, nothing so much as Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf.

Once again the use of masks anonymises the actors, erasing their role and drawing our attention to the verse alone. Birtwistle's score, too, underlines the rhythm of much of the metre, to magnificent effect but utterly unlike any theatre I've ever experienced before. It's a profounly rich experience in so many ways.

I'm excited for the last play but I'll return to The Mandalorian tomorrow.

The Oresteia: Agamemnon (Peter Hall, 1983)

 "I'm no more a breaker of bed-bond than, as a woman, I wield a man's weapon..."

I did The Oresteia at University... some twenty years ago. Watching this first instalment of the trilogy- Peter Hall, for the National Theatre, in 1983, now happily available with subtitles on YouTube- I'm reminded how little I remember of the details, alhough this is a very different translation from what we used in the module I studied, covering ancient Greek drama in translations for we English students as offered by the Classics Department.

This production is the first in a trilogy that I will be alternating with The Mandalorian before returning to Sapphire & Steel. It's an extraordinary production. For a start, it's made by a supergroup of culture as it existed in 1983. Aeschylus' words are translated by the superlative poet Tony Harrison, a working class lad from Leeds who managed to get the Classical education he needed to insulge his natural poetic talent as possibly the finest poet this country produced in the last quarter of the twentieth century. It's directed by Peter Hall. And the soundscape is by Harrison Birtwistle, the greatest British composer of the twentieth century and a man whose delightfully atonal compositions never trouble the Daily Mail reading acolytes of Classical FM.

The result of this is a fusion of the very ancient and very modern which fuses magnificently. On the one hand it's a brutally authentic production of Aescyhlus' play, from the very alien culture that is the Athens of the 4th century BC. The all-male actors- John Normington excels as Cassandra- and the masks worn by all players transport us back to Athens in its Golden Age and how theatre was done in those distant and murky days, by people we cannot understand. The masks, in particular, make me glad for the subtitles.

Yet the words are poetry you can get drunk on. I know little of poetic style in ancient Greece, but Tony Harrison's translation, with its kennings and alliteration, calls to mind the warlike muscularity of Old English poetry, and mixes cultural allusions with the demotic and, indeed, the earthy.

The masks, and the rigidity of the metre, are perfectly ec hoed by Birtwistle's unremittingly atonal score which, alongside Harrison's words, fuse ancient and modern with profound effect.

It's striking, perhaps, how much of this play is taken up with philosophical and actually quite rich philosophical discourse about Troy and about the costs, and pointlessness, of war, before stuff actually happens and Clytemnestra- offstage- does the bloody deed and avenges poor Iphygenia. As a father of a perfect daughter, I side with her.

This is exquisite. And more is to come...