Writer and Director: Ella Harpaz-Joralemon
Updating Euripides’ Bacchae to the hedonistic ’60s, Pentheus takes a timely dive into issues around cultish coercion, societal disarray and mental health in an era of rapidly-accelerating change. It’s the debut production of Lotophagi (‘Lotus Eaters’: mesmerically distracted), a new theatre company devoted to airing and re-interpreting Ancient Greek texts, whose key themes still resonate with modern concerns.
Pentheus is the distraught young man at the heart of the piece, an entitled, authoritarian upper-class fop (reminiscent of early Hugh Grant) played with hair-tearing angst by Ryan Keys. The action unfurls over a day of his life, made unbearable by the offensive Bacchanalian revels taking place on his doorstep. He’s slightly the worse for wear himself at the outset, self-medicating with whisky: his departed father’s drug of choice, recently supplanted in wider society by unsettling psychedelic options.
Moon landing headlines and chirpy background radio – Tiresias FM – sets the free and easy late 1960s scene. This contrasts starkly with Pentheus’ uptight indignation at his mother’s sudden decision to pursue the array of al fresco delights offered – to women only – by self-proclaimed new-deity-about-town Dionysus. Mother has “opened her mind… to schizophrenia and STDs!”
Recoiling at her letter urging him to join the cult – “You’d love Dionysus, he’s simply amazing!” – Pentheus rails at its flamboyant leader and his detrimental effect on society. “If everyone effed off to the woods, it’d be anarchy!” Donning a fey scarf and big Jackie Onassis sunglasses, Pentheus spoofs Dionysus: “It’s all fine, because I’m a god.” He howls at the curious crowds gathering in advance of another night’s drug-fuelled abandonment: “Get off my land, you hippy freaks!”
There’s genuine pathos in Pentheus’ attempts to write a pleading letter to his increasingly distant Mother, as he dwells on the attention he feels he deserves: “Soothing and healing; that’s what mothers are supposed to do.”
The scene turns investigative as Pentheus ruminates on Dionysus’s origins, lacking any help from the police supposedly under his control. A ribbon pinned evidence board is flourished, featuring a mugshot of the curly blond deviant, recently reprieved from charges of smuggling hallucinogens from the East.
Here the story deviates from Euripides’ Bacchae, where Pentheus was aware that the pesky party starter was his deified cousin, son of Zeus-inseminated Aunt Semele. But this ignorance accentuates Pentheus’ incomprehension at Dionysus’s hypnotic sway over the women of Thebes. “He isn’t strong or manly… how could these women obsess over him? Women love money and power, and I have those. I am Pentheus, and you are nothing!”
His protracted descent into gun-waving madness and eventual submission in a Dianarama of blubbed kohl – “You’ve taken me apart, piece by piece.” – to the swirling sounds of White Rabbit and Candy Says, is alarming, moving and cathartic.
As Pentheus, Ryan Keys credibly and wholeheartedly manages the transition from hubristic ire to bewilderment to longing, keeping the audience’s attention even in quiet moments of anguished reflection and head-in-hands grief. It’s a sustained, well-paced, bravura performance.
Re-framing The Bacchae as a monologue from the perspective of the young heir is an effective way of conveying its timeless themes – challenging authority via bold assertion of otherness, supporting female empowerment and accommodating the instincts that make people human – to a modern young audience.
Couching it in the ’60s to coincide with the rise of LSD is also educational, although the mayhem induced by psychedelics might be less brutal than any brought on by blind alcoholic drunkenness. The thuggish / ecstatic duality of wine (reflecting human nature, and the shift from savage hunter gathering to civilised agriculture), as well as the self-resurrecting nature of grapevines, are key to understanding Dionysus as a god of harvest.
Whatever the altered temporality and perspectives, those familiar with the various mythologies around Pentheus will enjoy comparing them to those in this new interpretation. Bold and captivating, with wide appeal, it serves to re-invigorate ancient Greek drama.
Reviewed on 17 August 2025
Camden Fringe runs until 24 August 2025
