Thyestes | Carriageworks (Pic: Jeff Busby)
I doubt a looser, more self-indulgent adaptation of anything would be possible. This version of Seneca’s Thyestes has been written by Thomas Henning, Simon Stone (who also directs), Chris Ryan and Mark Winter; otherwise known, I gather, as The Hayloft Project, commissioned by Malthouse Theatre in Melbourne.
You may already be familiar with this famous, ancient Greek tale. (If you’re in any way au fait with Titus Andronicus, for example, bells will likely ring.) If so, fuggedaboudit! Any resemblance between it and what you’ll see at Bay 20 is almost purely coincidental. Seneca is more of an inspiration for impro and riffing on an indicative published script of Hayloft’s own making. You might think, when I describe it as self-indulgent, I didn’t enjoy it. Nothing could be further from the truth, but no one could credibly deny the self-indulgence, even if the actors take their bows with an incongruous earnestness.
Bay 20 is a big space. Very big. Which allows for all sorts of possibilities and configurations. On this occasion, the stage was betwixt and between the split-in-two audience, the hemispheres of which faced each other, as well as the performers, who played, seamlessly, to both sides of the house. Needless to say, there were two curtains. Before these rose, a digital readout registered scene one, followed by a short precis of the action. And so on, for successive scenes. This got a little complicated later on, when scenes ran in reverse order. Tricky, too, was keeping track of the various relationships between characters. Those who come from extended family’s will have no problem, but I’m relatively poor in that respect (pun intended).
The play isn’t suitable for vegetarians, who will be doubly appalled to realise the meatballs served with spaghetti, a green salad, ciabatta and a decent red are hand-rolled from human flesh. Just like mama used to make. Well, almost. And if you reckon the current crop of royals are a bunch of over-bred misfits, cast your mind back to this mythical empire in which, to begin with, there was the King of Olympia. Hippodamia. Hippo had two ambitious sons; more’s the pity for him, since in a fit of filial jealousy they (Thyestes and Atreus) saw fit to slay their brother Chryssipus, who was anointed for the throne. Of course, they weren’t without their moral outrage, which they used to justify the fratricide. You see, Chrys was actually their half-brother. Ah-huh. The thick plottens. Following, thus far?
Well, of course, T & A being, apparently, a tin-cup short of a suit of intellectual armour between them, their assertive grab for the top job didn’t really advance their real prospects. Not in Olympia, anyway. So they hid out in Mycenae, where biding their time playing ping-pong (in the book according to Hayloft, anyway) they lucked into cosy pozzies as CEOs, or kind of locum lords, while King Eurystheus was away, fighting the Hercleidae; as you do. It proved a ruthless coup, rather than the freelance gig Eury had in mind, thanks to his untimely demise in battle.
It’s a complicated story and that’s only the sketchiest of outlines. But, as I say, don’t expect to discern too much of the orthodox version in this one. You’ll have enough trouble matching the pre-emptive descriptions for each scene to the action. For example, I’m still not sure how the opening scene, with three actors on stage, two of whom are engaged in banal conversation while the other tries to top his game score on his iPhone, relates to anything in particular. Discussions about one’s girlfriend’s “mammoth” tits — “like the face of God, on a chest” (“but God’s got a beard, so are they hairy?”) — seem quite remote, in every way, from the classical yarn.
Yet, as inane as the scene sounds (and it is), it’s superbly played and elicits the kind of involuntary, politically incorrect belly-laughs one instantaneously regrets. Like fart jokes in Blazing Saddles, or Dr Evil’s cruelty to MiniMe. If you’re already tut-tutting, better avert your eyes now because you’ll have to be prepared for (often naked, or partially so) man-on-man action (even if one of the men is s’posed to be a woman), fallatio on a strap-on, incestuous rape, adultery and the aforementioned cheap eats.
So, what’s the point of it all? Well, firstly, these actors are well worth seeing for sheer performance standards. And the very banality of the interactions, born as much of boredom, idle richness, intellectual laziness and moral bankruptcy, you’d have to say, has more than a little resonance with life today, in which about the only hunting and gathering is, say, for relatively obscure tracks on iTunes or for cool apps. Of course, as with The Boys, the emptiness of the lives portrayed is filled with horrifically bloody violence, of unparallelled intensity. I think this is where they’re going. Or at least where they’ve arrived. I’m not sure they set out for that destination, of course. I’ve the feeling the work took on its own live, visceral momentum while in train. It could very well be a runaway locomotive. There’s plenty of steam, that’s for sure, even if the wheels turn slowly.
A penultimate scene shows the rivalled brothers feigning camaraderie over that fateful feast. They reminisce about trees climbed, bikes rides and the stuff of childhood. The stuff that made them. A futile attempt to reconcile why they are as they are. This subtlety doesn’t reign for long: Atreus taunts Thyestes with fits of inscrutable, callous laughter, before confessing his meatballing of T’s sons. But, somewhere, amidst all the grossness and decadence, there’s a sociological thesis. In a way, Seneca seems to be a relatively arbitrary vehicle for that.
Incidentally, Stefan Gregory’s sound design is a powerful highlight, although the use of Queen’s I’m In Love With My Car is incongruous-strange.
The details: Thyestes, presented by Belvor St Theatre, plays the Bay 20 space at CarriageWorks as part of the Sydney Festival until February 19. Tickets on via Ticketmaster.
