“Brush Up Your Euripides!” ****
by Elyse Orecchio (guest reviewer)
This event is part of the Onassis Festival 2019: Democracy Is
Coming, co-presented by the Public Theater and Onassis US. For more, read Theatre’s Leiter Side’s coverage of Choir! Choir!
Choir! and Antigone: The
Lonely Planet.
No more scholarly papers for me—from now on I’d like to have all
my arguments presented on stage by Phylicia Rashad, please. She, along with an
entourage of four other formidable women, served up some serious Shakespeare
through an Ancient Greek lens in What’s Hecuba to Him?, a one-night engagement at
the Public Theater. Hecuba, perhaps Euripides’ most tragic heroine, was brought
to life by Rashad—making the audience sit up in its chairs whenever she
approached the mic.
The audience was offered a simple thesis. To paraphrase, it’s
widely thought that Shakespeare couldn’t have possibly read Hecuba and
many other ancient Greek texts, as they weren’t widely circulated and he
wouldn’t have had the access or education. But this night on stage was all
about proving Shakespeare was well versed in Hecuba, the evidence being
right there in his passages, plots, and characters.
Incidentally, this is where the clever title of the event comes
into play— “What’s Hecuba to him?” is of course a famous line from one of
Hamlet’s soliloquies. In the context of the evening, it asks what is Hecuba to
Shakespeare.
The stage was lined with four microphones, panel-style, and the
commentator was Tanya Pollard, Professor of English at Brooklyn College and
CUNY’s Graduate Center, where the editor of this blog is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Theatre. She has
literally written the book on Greek tragic women and Shakespeare:
The Greek plays most popular in the period were not male-centered
dramas such as Sophocles’ Oedipus,
but tragedies by Euripides that focused on raging bereaved mothers and
sacrificial virgin daughters, especially Hecuba and Iphigenia.—Abstract,
Pollard eloquently offered a series of arguments to support her thesis
that the Bard was quite brushed up on his Greek tragic women. There to help her
prove it were four actresses performing readings from Euripides and Shakespeare
alternately. In other words, Pollard set ‘em up and the ladies knocked them
down.
When Tamara in Titus Andronicus appeals to the king to spare her child’s life—it comes
from Hecuba (lines 153-215). In
both cases, her child is being served up as a sacrificial offering and mom is
like WTF. When Constance is grief-stricken over her son in King John—yup, it’s also
Hecuba (lines 657-845), as evidenced in the way the speeches
parallel each other in structure.
Euripides frequently explored women’s suffering in childbirth. Pollard
showed how Shakespeare riffed on these themes. Hamlet (played by a spirited
Isabel Arraiza) bemoans being “unpregnant” (the whiner is known for not feeling
man or woman enough in this moment), while King Lear (a commanding and really funny Tina
Benko) compares his sorrow to a mother’s hysterica passeo (basically a woman afflicted with a wandering womb; I’ll
leave you to figure that one out).
In case you’re wondering, I’d say thesis proven, Professor
Pollard!
The night ended with an extra helping of scholarly geekery; the
audience was invited to continue discussions over wine and cheese in the lobby,
where Ms. Pollard, the performers, and the Public Shakespeare Initiative team
were readily available to chat—how fitting for a democracy-themed festival.
Public Theater
425 Lafayette St., NYC
One-night engagement
Elyse Orecchio studied musical theatre at Emerson College, acting at CUNY Brooklyn College, and English Linguistics & Rhetoric at CUNY Hunter College. She has worked in nonprofit communications for more than a decade. She lives in Sunnyside, Queens, with her husband Joe, kids Theo and Melody, and three cats. eorecchio@gmail.com @elyseorecchio
