Theatrical grumbles

[featherynscale]

I finally got to the point the other day at which I decided what it is that I don't like about Agamemnon (the text itself - there are a number of things I don't like about the production). The first thing is the chorus. In the first "act", the chorus serve as omniscient narrators, they do the objective exposition thing, and what they say about the story is generally reliable. In the second half though, they make a transition from narrators to characters - they lose that omniscience and reliability and become simply a collection of old men from Argos, who have no more wisdom or insight than anybody else. They blame Helen for the destruction of Troy, they hem and haw over the murder of Agamemnon, they mock Aegisthus but have no power to really defy him.
I will admit to not having read the play before I started, so this effect is as pronounced in me as it will be in our audience, who presumably are not terribly familiar with the story - I had expectations that all the chorus' lines would be "true" in the context of the story, but they're not.
And I don't know a whole lot about Greek theatre - this may be the way that things normally happen, maybe it's just that my expectations about point of view are not applicable to this form of drama.
The other thing I don't like about the show is that all of the back exposition, the story about the feud between Atreus and Thyestes, and the story of how Atreus killed Thyestes' children and then fed them to Thyestes, causing Thyestes to curse the house of Atreus, which eventually brings about the events of the play, all that story is given in the last 20 minutes of the play. I assume that in ancient Greece, everybody knew this story already, but if you don't know the story, you're kind of lost at the end - you understand that Agamemnon killed Clytemnestra's daughter, and then Clytemnestra killed him in revenge, and that makes sense - except then there's this Aegisthus guy that you haven't seen at all in the play thus far, and he comes out and talks about how this whole thing was orchestrated by him to pursue this whole Atreus/Thyestes thing. And then it's over. And you're going "What the hell was all that about?"
And Agamemnon is part of a trilogy, and I assume that the feud-backstory is advanced in the other two plays, but if I were writing it, I think I'd end Agamemnon with the idea that Clytemnestra murders her husband to avenge her daughter, and then not bring in the new character Aegisthus until the second play.
But maybe I'm just spoiled by the movies.

Comments

[rougewench.livejournal.com]

Remember that Greek Theater was ritual worship of the god Dionysis. The relating of the entire story was the method by which these stories were taught. You are reenacting sacred oral history in performing the play...meaning, the audience is taught by the experience of watching the drama unfold. Also, this particular play is the first in a series, that has much to do with the manner of its expositional nature, however, the exposition is played in the manner one of the period would expect.

Also, it was the nature of the chorus to act as both a narrative body and to step into a "role" as necessary. This was not an uncommon device at all, but certainly different to the modern theatrical sensibility.


D.