Greek Tragedy On The Small Screen At BFI Southbank

The BFI is launching a season of rarely seen before TV productions of Greek tragedy, offering a fascinating range of approaches to screen presentations of ancient Greece. These plays laid the very foundations of dramatic form and still speak so powerfully over two and a half millennia, but adaptations have now completely disappeared from our TV screens. From the first documented British television production of the genre in 1958, a moving Women of Troy with a set dressed to look like a refugee camp (BBC), around 25 richly interesting classical dramas were transmitted across BBC, ITV and Channel 4. The most recent major production was Don Taylor’s 1990 BBC presentation of Iphigenia at Aulis, starring a magisterial Fiona Shaw. During the season audiences will not only be able to see Iphigenia at Aulis on the big screen, but also see Fiona Shaw take part in a Q&A and panel discussion exploring the rich history of Greek plays on British TV.
Certain of the productions which will be showing were original creations for television. One such example is the lavish 1972 BBC production of King Oedipus with Ian Holm, set in an indistinct Middle Eastern locale with colonial overtones and a quirkily sexual interpretation of the Greek chorus. A number of the television productions were re-presentations of existing theatre productions. Among them are the absorbing 1962 production of Sophocles’ Electra (ITV), which was daringly presented in Modern Greek without subtitles, and the five-hour Channel 4 transmission of Peter Hall’s National Theatre Oresteia trilogy (1983) which was performed by an all-male masked cast. In addition there were educational programmes made for schools or The Open University. Noteworthy here is Patrick Stewart’s performance in the title role of a powerfully stylised production of Oedipus Tyrannus (1977).
Another great pleasure on offer is the creative responses of set and costume designers to ancient Greece and to its performance spaces and conventions. Striking in this regard is the brilliant ‘sci-fi’ Agamemnon (1979) with costumes by Barbara Kidd, who was feted for her work on Doctor Who. Accompanying this screening is the original television play Of Mycenae and Men, which was originally broadcast alongside Agamemnon in 1979. Written in the manner of an ancient satyr play, this original comedy brilliantly parodies Agamemnon in its telling of the marital reunion of the incomparable Helen (Diana Dors) and her long-suffering husband Menelaus (Freddie Jones) on their return home from Troy.
Despite being written for a 5th-century BC Athenian audience, the Greek tragedy appeals to the universality of human experience and is concerned with profound questions about the fundamentals of life. The ten productions in this season prove to be as relevant to us today as they were when first televised and the season provides a rare opportunity to see major stars, including Greg Hicks, Helen Mirren, Diana Rigg and Patrick Stewart, perform these canonical works from the ancient Greek repertoire on the big screen.
Programmed in association with Screen Plays: Theatre Plays on British Television, an AHRC-funded research project based in the School of Media, Arts and Design, University of Westminster.
BFI Southbank Website