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SINCE 1819
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The famous Cambridge Greek Play has returned to the Arts Theatre with a double bill all performed in Ancient Greek in a tradition that stretches back 130 years.
Students will act in the earliest surviving Greek tragedy, Persians by Aeschylus, and the only remaining satyr play, Cyclops by Euripides, each with English surtitles above the stage.
The tradition of staging a play in Greek every three years at Cambridge University extends back to 1882, with alumni including Rupert Brooke, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Tom Hiddleston.
Director Daniel Goldman said: “It’s an amazing experience hearing these plays performed in the original Greek, because you can experience the sound and the poetry of the language. The surtitles are easy to follow and although they don’t translate every word they do tell the story. The actors are doing so well at learning their lines.
“The Greek Play at Cambridge is an incredible institution – it has been performed every three years, even during the wars. What’s amazing about these two plays is I think neither Persians nor Cyclops has ever been done for the Cambridge Greek Play in 130 years.”
Most previous Greek Play titles include Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone and Lysistrata, Prometheus and The Frogs and Agamemnon.
While Persians draws on recent Greek history and Cyclops is derived from the well-known episode in Homer’s Odyssey, both plays present an outsider as the central character.
Daniel says: “The playwright of Persians, Aeschylus, actually fought in the war he is describing eight years before he wrote the play. The Persians invaded Greece and the play is about the news filtering back to the Persian court that all of their soldiers, a million Persians, have been slaughtered and that they have lost the war.
“It’s a Greek writing about the tragedy of war, but from the perspective of the people who attacked Greece. It’s this fascinating that the original audience were watching something that they all participated in just eight years previously, but from a totally unexpected point of view.
“I started planning these plays three years ago but suddenly Persians feels current because it reflects the situation with Putin invading Ukriane, where a country with a much bigger army has invaded but hasn’t read the conditions right and has bad leadership and is being destroyed.”
Meanwhile Cyclops is a broad comedy with “lots of gags, lots of silly music” and “drunken sex”. It is “a palate cleanser” after the tragedy of Persians, says Daniel.
Persians and Cyclops are on at the Cambridge Arts Theatre from Wednesday, October 19 to Saturday, October 22. Tickets, from £23, are available from the box office at 01223 503333 and cambridgeartstheatre.com.