Audiences at the premiere of The Bacchae in 405 B.C. were well aware that the myth providing Euripides his source material hearkened to an age safely removed from their own society, and that the charismatic spiritual leader depicted therein wasn't merely preaching the Divine Word, but was himself, Divine, rendering his exhortations to drink up and submit to his whim, however violent its expression, holy commandments to be obeyed without equivocation. Despite historical evidence of Christians likewise taking their gospel to literal extremes at times—witch-burning, say—Damon Kiely's attempt to impose New Testament values on pagan sensibilities makes for a risky proposition.
The old-time religion, in this case, is that practiced in the Appalachian regions during the Great Depression of the 1930s, where Agatha's son, Peter, has inherited the clothing factory employing the women of the community, whose long hours of grueling toil barely produce enough to delay bank foreclosures on the business supporting the town's economy. One day, a traveling Deacon arrives proclaiming the hedonistic life as the way to eternal happiness. When the workers abandon their tasks to hear his sermon, Peter objects—reasonably at first, but gradually escalating in rancor until his fury approaches the authoritarian levels exercised by his late father. This abuse of power (rather than the ancient Greek sin of hubris) will prove his undoing during a fatal confrontation with a congregation steeped in whiskey and liberation. Playgoers in 2015 are unlikely to fault the notion of laborers taking a holiday, or to ascribe wrongdoing to the communal exhilaration engendered by shared emotional experiences (think rock concerts or pep rallies), but crowd frenzy leading to murder is unacceptable. Since the Deacon piously denies responsibility for inciting his disciples to mob action, it's up to Kiely to ensure our sympathy for the perpetrators by emphasizing the sexist aspects of capitalistic inequities leading to physical conflict, and hinting at "battered wife syndrome" as a catalyzing factor in the bloody feminine uprising.
Fortunately, this House Theater production of The Revels encourages us to set aside contemplation of weighty issues in favor of immediate spectacle. Leslie Buxbaum Danzig's acrobatic direction makes the most of Grant Sabin's staircase-and-catwalk scenic design, permitting actors to "climb" rough mountain paths or dangle from cliffsides, while Christine Adair's dialect instruction and Barbara Silverman's foot-stamping ethnic dances, accompanied by Jess McIntosh's score of live-action string-band ditties, immerse us in ebullient pastoral revelry befitting new-world worshippers of Dionysos, the original prophet of Love and Intoxication, inventor of the arts and humanities that we celebrate today.
