| Researchers monitoring Hawaii coral for bleaching By AUDREY McAVOY 2010-08-22T21:32:35ZPEARL HARBOR, Hawaii (AP) -- Scientists plan to monitor corals in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands next month for signs of bleaching that could harm the reefs.... hosted.ap.org |
Study: Flamboyant male dancing attracts women best By MARIA CHENG 2010-09-09T15:52:15ZLONDON (AP) -- John Travolta was onto something. Women are most attracted to male dancers who have big, flamboyant moves similar to the actor's trademark style, British scientists say in a new study.... hosted.ap.org |
Calif. utility stumbles on 1.4M years old fossils By GILLIAN FLACCUS 2010-09-21T13:38:01ZRIVERSIDE, Calif. (AP) -- A utility company preparing to build a new substation in an arid canyon southeast of Los Angeles has stumbled on a trove of animal fossils dating back 1.4 million years that researchers say will fill in blanks in Southern California's history.... hosted.ap.org |
Hungarian Village, Awash in Misery For many, the disastrous flood of red mud in Kolontar, Hungary, viscerally pointed up environmental dangers that often seem faraway. feeds.nytimes.com |
This play was all ancient Greek to me. But I liked it The Cambridge Greek Play has survived for 128 years. But watching ancient tragedy in the original is still a revelatory experienceLast week, Cambridge University presented a play in ancient Greek. You'd really not think there'd be much call for this any more, and even card-carrying Athenians plumped for a month of Michael Jackson instead. But the Cambridge Arts Theatre says Agamemnon was a sell-out.Now turned 128, the Cambridge Greek Play has set root in the British stage as a quirky but hardy triennial, its alumni spanning Ralph Vaughan Williams (composer of incidental music to The Wasps in 1909) to Annie Castledine (director of the two prior to this year's). It seems hard enough a trick to have managed in 1882; harder still in 2010.I went on opening night, baffled how this thing, against all odds, exists. Though there are surtitles – since 2001 – most of a decidedly rapt audience did not seem glued to them. (This included the man in front of me, though I later discovered he was Professor Simon Goldhill, university professor of Greek.)If you don't speak the lingo, it's the soundworld of ancient Greek – awash with strange noises and rhythmic tides – that strikes you. Goldhill explained it to me after: in the modulated stress patterns – like the heroic dochmiacs, reserved for moments of high drama – and voices which sometimes sing, speak, chant and semi-sing, lurk rich emotional registers cloaked in the materiality of the language. And if we're accustomed to hearing Tosca in the original, why not Troy?Yet there's more to theatre, of course, than the language: the intention behind the Cambridge Greek Play has always been to provide professional stagings, not readings, with original music and professional directors. And Helen Eastman's production was visually sumptuous, Hellenic eye-candy. Designer Neil Irish conceived a chorus kitted out in bowler hat, demob suits and just enough makeup to hint at the theatrical mask, each different enough to suggest they're individuals. Attired in bridal veil and leather greatcoat, Phoebe Haines offered a kind of Cindi Lauper punk to Cassandra; and she even crowd-surfed over the chorus in a prophetic fit. Sophie Crawford's boy herald, in khakis, was a cross-dressing Lawrence of Arabia. Here, too, it's noteworthy Eastman opted not to make these soldiers, who have just returned from 10 years of war, into squaddies of the Black Watch. (Critics thought Cambridge played the Balkan wars too insistently in 1998's Trojan Women; in any case, there are surely only so many times you can dress actors in 20th-century soldier uniforms.In one of the more delectable visual moments, Eastman stages the human sacrifice of Iphigenia – taking place before the soldiers depart for Troy – by having the chorus behead a bouquet of yellow flowers, wrapped in a yellow dress; when Katherine Jack's Clytemnestra later appears, backed by a family portrait with a daughter clad in yellow, this play's judgment of her motive for killing Agamemnon becomes clear. Eastman has to draw on Judeo-Christian tradition, as the principal point of religious reference for audiences, but the stage is suffused with religious sacrifice: the chorus carry portable altars, religion-boxes out of which fire, water, blood and the tapestries on which Agamemnon treads can all be drawn. Among Romantic critics, Schlegel came up with the idea that the chorus are a kind of ideal audience, and so Eastman's are not universally the old men of the text. This chorus moves and speaks collectively, but not the same way at the same time.There is an EastEnders-ish cliffhanger, where in the concluding instant Orestes silently appears bathed in a spotlight, hinting at new cycles of vengeance. But it's a production which revolves around its Cassandra. Determined to portray her character first and foremost as a prisoner of war having suffered rape and negligence, Haines surrounded herself in the rehearsal rooms with photographs of refugee camps and horrors of contemporary wars. Alex Silverman's score, in 11-8 and 7-8 time signatures reflecting the text's metres, was fitted round her mezzo.By the end, I realised I'd been seized by the zeal of a proselyte. The only sadness is that I'll have to wait another three years.TheatreLanguageUniversity of CambridgeClassicsguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |