Plain English of 'Bacchai' boosts its appeal

"Bacchai" by Euripides, is a famous play by an old dead Greek guy. \nBut your drama teacher's Greek tragedy this is not.\n"Bacchai," presented by the IU Theater and Drama department, mixes the old with the new in Irish playwright Colin Teevan's brand-new translation of Euripides's classic drama to create an intriguing and understandable production.\nThe play revolves around the conflict between the god Dionysus (Robert J.D. Spalding) and his mortal cousin King Pentheus, played with amazing depth and passion by Sam Wootten. Dionysus come from "Asian lands" with his cult of women. When Pentheus refuses to recognize Dionysus as a deity, Dionysus and his frenzied women brutally punish Pentheus and his family.\nAt first glance, "Bacchai" seems to be a strange, almost sacrilegious version of the story of the god Dionysus and his struggle against Pentheus. Dionysus is bare-chested in silver pants and a floor-length pleather jacket. The Greek chorus dresses provocatively in the style of Japanese anime girls: schoolgirl skirts, platform shoes and electric blue or pink hair. The chorus dances to modern music, and everyone speaks in plain English. There are still some robes and wreaths of ivy, but even those characters have their own modern touches. For example, Pentheus' father uses a golf club as a cane, complete with a horn he honks periodically throughout the play.\nThis production of "Bacchai" keeps many of the classic elements of Greek theater, while also allowing it to be accessible for modern audiences. Probably the most striking classic element of this production are the beautiful masks that many characters wear, expertly hand-crafted by undergraduate fine arts student Ian Martin.\nThe danger, of course, with the use of masks is the obvious loss of facial expression by the performers, but the actors meet the challenge and surpass all expectations by using body language and voice inflection to give their performances depth and passion.\nSome people will probably criticize this production of "Bacchai" for being too pop culture and too "outside the box" to be a good representation of Euripides' original idea. But for everyone else, this crafted play tells an exciting and interesting story in terms that we can easily understand.\nRather than seeing a play that needs to be translated because of the snobby Shakespearean English the robe-clad actors use to tell the story, audience members can sit back and enjoy the story in plain, contemporary English while watching colorfully-clad actors performing the story with energy and passion. After all, plays like "Bacchai" were originally written for the masses to watch and enjoy, and it's nice to have it understandable enough for it be watched and enjoyed by the masses once again.