How to stage Greek tragedy today. By SIMON GOLDHILL. Chicago: University of 
Chicago Press, 2007. Pp. 248. Paper, $18.00. ISBN 0–226–30128–1.

Order this text for $12.24 from Amazon.com using this link and benefit 
CAMWS and the Classical Journal: 

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect-home/classjourn-20


A CJ Online Exclusive

Simon Goldhill has long been interested in Greek tragedy and critical 
theory, and is well-known for books such as Language, Sexuality, Narrative, 
the Oresteia (1984), Reading Greek Tragedy (1986) and Aeschylus: the 
Oresteia (1992). How to stage Greek tragedy today is somewhat of a 
departure, in that it addresses the issue of contemporary dramatic 
performances, and reveals Goldhill’s interest as a spectator, augmented by 
his experience producing the Greek play at Cambridge for three years.

A consistent theme in Goldhill’s work has been the unreliability of 
language, and the title of his latest book itself seems to be an example of 
this. We quickly learn that Goldhill has no intention of telling us how to 
stage Greek tragedy. It is “counterproductive to lay down the law about how 
Greek tragedy must be produced.” (p. 3) Instead, he lists six “pressing 
problems” and devotes a chapter to each, first discussing the problem from 
a classicist’s perspective, and then describing and discussing some 
contemporary examples. This witty treatment of the title may have, I 
suspect, some reference to a darker theme that underlies Goldhill’s text, 
particularly in its later chapters.

This book has two irritating aspects, which perhaps should be mentioned 
immediately. First, Goldhill offers close readings of passages from various 
plays, where much of what he says is available to a careful reader of a 
conservative translation, and takes no account of the fact that the actors 
and directors of his putative audience are close readers themselves. 
Second, he treats literary theory in a general way, again not taking notice 
that theory is available to directors and actors. Indeed, my own students 
from drama are essential in keeping me abreast of developments in critical 
theory. I thus suspect that directors and actors (along with dramaturgs, 
critics and general readers) will sometimes sense that they are being 
patronized. I would urge them to read on, because this book makes an 
implicit but compelling case that Greek drama cannot be produced today, and 
challenges us to find a way to rise above the problems it describes.
	
The six problem areas Goldhill lists are space and concept, chorus, the 
actor’s role, tragedy and politics, translations, and gods. Goldhill’s 
remarks on space are his most substantial, and rely on interesting modern 
work, most notably by David Wiles. When he turns to modern examples, he 
gives a fine account of Ariane Mnouchkine’s Les Atrides, a production to 
which he turns on several occasions. In this chapter Goldhill praises Les 
Atrides for its large acting area, but objects to the location of the 
central door under the audience, just as Wiles has done. Although he 
concludes that more is lost than gained by staging the play thus, he gives 
a fair account of the translator (and feminist theorist) Helene Cixous’ 
reasoning: “the horror behind the locked door was now located within 
themselves (the audience) as a body (as it were)—a point which gains 
poignant force from Cixous’ feminist argument about the inevitable 
absorption of misogynist myth inside the psyche of the subjects of a 
patriarchal system”(p. 17).

In his general discussion of the chorus, Goldhill stresses its function as 
a “hinge” between scenes. But in the discussion he describes other 
interesting uses, pointing out that individuals in tragedy need the 
communal voice to both support and oppose them. He usefully distinguishes 
the chorus as a “character” and as the voice of choral poetry itself. In 
some cases, Goldhill claims, when the chorus mainly serves as a sounding 
board for the lead character, the current practice of a reduced chorus is 
sufficient. But when the chorus speaks as the poetic tradition, a full 
chorus is needed.

Injecting the element of dance into the drama is not easily done. Two 
productions of a Greek tragedy highly praised here, Peter Hall’s Oresteia 
and Lee Breuer’s Gospel at Colonus, integrate poetry and music but fail to 
include dance. Goldhill rejects the American musical theater as an 
artificial construct, but the highly trained chorus of the Greek National 
Theater surely deserves mention. The only incorporation of choral dance 
Goldhill praises is Mnouchkine’s use of the Kathakali theater tradition of 
India, which includes dance. Although Goldhill mentions the word 
“Gesamtkunstwerk” with reference to this tradition, he overlooks other more 
recent attempts to create a union of dance and poetic drama in respect to 
which this term is often used. This includes what is usually called dance 
theater, which dates back to the Clytemnestra of Martha Graham and includes 
such recent works as the Dido and Aeneas of Mark Morris and To You the 
Birdie (a version of Phedre) by the downtown collective The Wooster Group 
and Mac Wellman’s Antigone, performed by Big Dance Theater.

In Goldhill’s chapter on acting, comments on physical action, props and the 
use of silence as “an aggressive gesture” (p. 94) would all seem to be 
obvious even to the non-expert. The substantial message in this section is 
that long speeches, loaded stichomythia and lengthy debates require actors 
trained to perform Shakespeare or similarly complex rhetoric. Actors do not 
require this skill to perform most modern drama. Although Goldhill strikes 
a characteristic self-mocking pose when he observes that rhetoric is not a 
matter of “men barking” (p. 108), trained actors are necessary for the 
performance of almost any Greek tragedy and the lack of them is a 
considerable problem outside of state-funded or otherwise well-heeled 
dramatic organizations.

On the topic of tragedy and politics, Goldhill identifies the main 
political themes of tragedy as “the violence that emerges from the pursuit 
of justice, …the corruption of power in the pursuit of war, …the 
humiliation and misplaced confidence of the aftermath of military victory, 
…the battleground of gender within the social order.” This list is good as 
far as it goes, but ignores one important issue. While discussing the 
chorus, Goldhill uses the phrase “transgression and transcendence.” This is 
a pervasive blind spot in his view of tragedy, in which tragedy explores 
the “fissures” in self and society. In the context of theory, to account 
for transcendence, I suggest, one can turn to Hegel and his followers, to 
the concept of self-realization. Although Goldhill refers to Steiner’s 
Antigones, he has not made use of the valuable discussion found there.

In his chapter on gods, monsters and ghosts, Goldhill discusses (mainly 
based on various productions) how the Furies should be depicted, and 
concludes that a modern audience finds it hard to accept monstrous females 
representing the darker part of the psyche. This may satisfy a theoretical 
and political view, but it ignores the multitude of such females on the 
stage, e.g., in Shakespeare and in opera. I think that Goldhill and others 
also overrate the difficulty of presenting Greek gods on stage. Some highly 
praised modern translations downgrade or leave them out, but one cannot 
underestimate what an audience’s imagination will accept.

Goldhill is too ready to approve of translations that have been used in 
performance and to dismiss conservative translations. Watling’s 
translation, which Goldhill rejects for production, is very effective in 
making clear the subtleties of Sophocles. The use of multiple translations, 
which is common practice in the theater, either to check the translation 
being used or to construct a new one, should be suggested. Surely a 
classicist should take notice of the more adventurous translations and 
versions, whose authors are often knowledgeable about Greek tragedy. In one 
of his rare acknowledgments of American productions, Goldhill gives little 
more than a mention to Chuck Mee’s adventurous versions.

Goldhill’s most troubling remarks concern the translation of choral songs. 
Wertenbaker’s versions of Sophoclean odes are spare but intense, and she 
receives his highest rating for the so-called Theban trilogy. His only 
unqualified praise for choral translation, however, is for Seamus Heaney’s 
Cure at Troy. Basing his view on what he thinks is theatrically effective, 
Goldhill is forced to praise other translations that he admits have not 
translated these songs adequately. (This is seen most clearly in his mixed 
comments on McLeish’s versions.)

Goldhill’s chapter on space is thus the most hopeful in the book. Problems 
with long speeches and debates can be overcome by utilizing appropriately 
trained actors; the problem of the chorus is more intractable. If, as 
Goldhill says, “the space of the festival is danced into being by the 
choral movement,” the dance is not a dispensable component, and the 
choreographer and the composer become as essential as the director. In his 
discussion of translations, Goldhill reveals that those used in successful 
productions are mostly inadequate, especially in the lyrical element. 
Although he does not conclude that Greek tragedy as it is produced today is 
gravely flawed, it is hard for the reader to conclude otherwise.

MICHAEL SHAW
University of Kansas


You may remove yourself from the CJ-Online list-serve by sending an email 
to: [log in to unmask] Leave the subject line blank, and in the first 
line of the message write: UNSUBSCRIBE