The History of the Cambridge Greek Play
by Vanessa Lacey, archivist to the Cambridge Greek Play Committee
The tradition of performing a Greek play in Cambridge goes back to 1882, when the very first production was of Sophocles’ tragedy Ajax. The two producers were not classicists in the strict sense: the first was John Willis Clark, superintendent of the Museum of Zoology who possessed a passionate interest in the theatre. The other was Charles Waldstein, a classical archaeologist.
From the first, the plays were intended to be effective drama as well as accurate reconstructions of the ancient Greek productions. The producers were inspired by the opportunity to stage the plays rather than to read them as texts, and to make a wider audience aware of the particular strengths of Greek tragedy and comedy. “Directness and vitality” was the ideal, according to Waldstein. Even in the nineteenth century it was accepted that most of the audience were not sufficiently fluent in Greek to follow the play, and a printed English translation was provided.
Ajax was a triumph and was followed by Aristophanes’ comedy Birds in the following year. The plays flourished during the nineteenth century amid the contemporary passion for all things classical, but their continuing success during the twentieth century depended on the ability of the producers to move with the times and incorporate new theatrical developments into the plays. That their success was indeed sustained was in part due to the combination of undergraduate ability with more established talent. The artist Gwen Raverat was invited to illustrate the programme for Aeschylus’ Oresteia in 1933, creating some striking woodcut designs. Music for the plays was contributed by a wide range of composers including Hubert Parry (Birds, 1883), Ralph Vaughan Williams (Wasps, 1909) and Dennis Arundell (Sophocles’ Electra, 1927).
Undergraduate talent should not be dismissed. Some undergraduates who took part in the play later made theatre their career: for example James Mason on film and John Barton on stage for the Royal Shakespeare Company; more recently Tom Hiddleston (Orestes in Sophocles’ Electra, 2001) has gone on to a stellar career on stage and screen. By the 1960s professional directors were recruited, opening up a new range of dramatic possibilities and technical resources. Later productions included actors in modern dress and a new interest in political relevance. In 1998, for example, Jane Montgomery set the last Greek play of the twentieth century, Euripides’ Trojan Women, in the former Yugoslavia during the aftermath of the war. The 2007 production of Euripides’ Medea was set in a tranquil Edwardian garden (right), but director Annie Castledine used historical parallels with the suffragette movement to explore the bloody impact of Medea’s suffering and revenge. In 1890 the Daily Chronicle had announced that “Greek plays are a fashion not likely to last”, yet interest in Greek tragedy still shows no sign of fading. By 2004, when Annie Castledine directed Oedipus Tyrannus in Cambridge, Vanessa Redgrave was playing Hecuba for the RSC, Claire Higgins playing the same role at the Donmar Warehouse, and Katie Mitchell staged Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis at the National Theatre.
The Cambridge Greek play has a long historical tradition, but it is still a fertile ground for generating new dramatic experiences.
