The Oresteia at The Bridge (Image from https://www.bridgetheatre.co.uk/whats-on/the-oresteia/

Dear Readers, as you know I go to see a lot of theatre, and last week I managed two matinees: ‘The Misanthrope’ at the National Theatre and ‘The Oresteia’ at The Bridge. Both productions were interesting and held my attention – Sandra Oh, the lead actress in ‘The Misanthrope’ was sick on the day that I attended, but her understudy was excellent. Both plays were modern-day adaptations: ‘The Misanthrope’ is based on Molière’s comedy, about a plain-speaking aristocrat who gets himself into trouble by speaking the truth (as he sees it), while ‘The Oresteia’ is based on a trilogy of plays by ancient Greek writer Aeschylus. In the National Theatre production of ‘The Misanthrope’, ‘Alice’ is an author who tells everybody the truth and gets herself into all sorts of trouble, whilst ‘The Oresteia’ focuses on the Middleton family: the father is the director of a company that manufactures armaments (as opposed to King Agamemnon, who sacrificed his eldest daughter in order to get fair winds for the voyage to Troy).

The Oresteia is a bit of a haul (3 hours and 30 minutes with two intervals (I recommend the caramel ice cream with chocolate chips). The performances were excellent all round, and the set is really something (see photo above). However, because some of the scenes are played inside that glass box the sound was sometimes muddy, plus everyone is arguing or speaking across everyone else, so it can be difficult to work out what’s going on. The play is based on the Orestes trilogy by Aeschylus so, as you might expect, there’s lots of bloodshed: the patriarch is killed by his wife, who is in turn killed by her son. But whereas in the classical original the themes are universal moral questions, this really seems to have turned into morie of a soap opera.

However.

I came away, as I so often do these days, with the feeling that both plays suffered from ‘stuff everything  in-ism’. There was sexism, racism, ‘me-too’, climate change, ‘political correctness’ and its ramifications, and a dozen other things besides. There is not a moment of thoughtful silence in either play – maybe understandable in a comedy like ‘The Misanthrope’, less so in something based on a Greek tragedy. But maybe this is to do with the highly stimulating environment that we now live in, with the constant pinging of phones and 24 hour entertainment available to stream wherever we go. I feel as if many playwrights (and film makers, and authors) are afraid that we’ll be bored if they don’t throw every possible theme into a single work.

I am hearing  from a lot of people who are finding it hard to focus when reading, so maybe the same is true of the performing arts. What I’m not sure about is whether this is actually a general trend, or if it’s just my reaction to being over-stimulated. I’ve always enjoyed the space in a performance that allows you to think for yourself, or makes room for a gradual realisation about the implications of an action, or what a character has said. There is room for this and for the over-the-top, crammed shows that excite and stimulate. I suppose that’s why I’m more ready to forgive The Misanthrope for its hyperactivity than I am The Oresteia. But it seems a shame if everything tilts towards too much, all the time, so that the audience staggers out unsure of what they’ve seen.

What do you think, Readers? Are the arts responding to the challenge of instant stimulation by becoming over-stimulated themselves? Or has it ever been thus? Are you having trouble focussing on longer, slower works? And is there an answer?