Arts

Look out for boys

Gillian Freeman

Two thousand five hundred and sixty years ago an eagle flew over Sicily holding a tortoise in its talons. It was looking for a rock on which to crack the tortoise's shell and— so the legend goes—mistook the bald pate of Aeschylus for stratum, released the tortoise and killed the writer.

'Over two thousand years!' said an American lady who had been sitting on the tier below me during a performance of Agamemnon. 'And I thought the Bicentennial made us old !'

The Greek theatre from which we now ascended was not at Verona or Epidaurus or indeed any of those classical arenas scattered about the Mediterranean. From a Londoner's point of view it was rather more accessible. We took the Newbury turn-off from the M4 (exit 12) and proceeded a mere two miles into rural Berkshire.

'Look Out For Boys' said the signposts at the narrow intersections of leafy lanes fringing the bluebell copses—and there they were, sedate gowned figures bearing white poles with which they directed an intrusive queue of cars across a field, an improvised parking lot. Between the cars families picnicked. When they had packed away the plastic plates, more boys directed them on foot to the theatre to witness the fall of the House of Atreus.

The Bradfield College Greek Theatre has itself become something of a legend. In the late nineteenth century, Bradfield was the first of the public schools to follow Oxford's example by presenting a Greek play in the original GrLek. In 1881 the headmaster, Dr Herbert Branston Gray, invited the (later) famous Shakespearian actor-manager F. R. Benson to stage-manage Alcestis. Dr Gray himself played Admetus.

Seven years later the College acquired a disused chalk-pit just outside the grounds, and under Dr Gray's direction the boys worked on a reconstruction of the ancient theatre at Epidaurus, scaling it down from a seating capacity of 14,000 to 1,400. Professional workmen were brought in to complete the ten tiers and the orchestra, and to erect a wooden temple as a permanent stagebuilding. In June, 1890, the school presented Sophocles's Antigone in its own theatre, and two years later followed it by Alcestis again. Agamemnon was given in 1892 and from then on until the First World War, these three plays were performed triennially.

World War Two again broke the tradition (one couldn't, after all, floodlight an arena during the blackout) and it wasn't until 1949 that the regular productions were resumed, once more with Agamemnon. Since then Clytemnestra begat Clytemnestra so to speak, for by an extraordinary coincidence the boy who took the part that year, now Sir John Ackroyd, is father of this year's murderous queen, Timothy Ackroyd, shortly off to Lamda and, there is no doubt, to a brilliant theatrical career. Certainly a boy to look out for.

From his first appearance through the slowly opening doors of Richard Ackerbath's majestic set, his presence was riveting. Throughout the text Clytemnestra is referred to, both implicitly and explicitly, as a man—her lover, Aegisthus, conversely is called 'woman' by the Chorus—and taking this as his key, Ackroyd made no vocal concessions or affectations of movement as indication of femininity. His total command of gesture—so often the give-away of the hyper-kinetic amateur—his pacing and his delivery, his compelling sense of tragic destiny made this a memorable performance. The impact is all the more astonishing when one considers that, in the Greek play, the drama lies not in the action but in the language, and most of the audience did not understand a single word.

As a matter of fact most of the cast didn't understand a word either, when they auditioned for the play. Only four out of a cast of more than fifty were studying the classics, Guy Davies, who led the Chorus with style and strength, being one of them.

The entire two and a half hours of uncut text was taught phonetically by Dr Christopher Stace, Head of Classics and coproducer for the first time with veteran Charles Lepper, one-time professional actor and Bradfield's Head of English and Drama, who produced the two previous Greek plays solo, and the six Shakespeare plays presented in the intervening years. In 1970 he took his production of Sophocles's Philoctetes to Cyprus, where the boys performed in the ancient theatre at Salamis. It has to be said that the natives didn't understand a word either. Correct ancient Greek was—if you'll forgive the awful pun— Greek to them. Bradfield is now the only school in the world which performs the plays in the language of their time.

The play chosen for 1973 was The Bacchae, and Charles Lepper invited a professional choreographer, Annette Cotterill, to assist him with the formidable task of turning English schoolboys into Greek women. The result was a tour de force. John Barber, reviewing the performance in the Daily Telegraph, wrote: 'The triumph of Charles Lepper's production is the Chorus, sixteenyear-old boys robed in orange and blood red, with long skirts and bare midriffs, representing the female disciples of the god Dionysus. Looking ineffably strange in white half-masks, arching sinuous backs and solemnly clicking their fingers, these maenads suggested the drilled hysteria of a Nuremberg rally.' The Ford Foundation made a thirty-minute film about it.

The costumes for that production and for this year's Agamemnon were by Dora Raeburn. Stylised, authentic and beautiful, each was conceived as an intrinsic part of the total effect. She used mainly reds and purples, with gold for Aegisthus and white for the deranged Cassandra. This was Mrs Raeburn's second Agamemnon—she dressed the 1958 production—but this time she had to allow for greater movement since Annette Cotterill was again asked to devise the choreography. The results were astonishing and not only because these were untrained schoolboys, fitting in rehearsals between exams and cricket. Worthy of the professional theatre, the movement was constantly inventive within the classical confines; never static, never repetitious. Taking the Bird of Vengeance as a central motif, .Annette Cotterill illuminated the text by detailed mimed sequences for the Chorus so that we saw enacted the sacrifice of Iphigenia and the rape of Helen as well as heard them spoken, chanted or sung.

Christopher Steel, Bradfield's Director of Music and a distinguished composer in his own right, provided a marvellous orchestral score of virtually symphonic length which will shortly be available as a stereo LP from Discourses, together with highlights from the play. (For those interested his score for The Bacchae is on DCL 1218 froth the same company and this also includes excerpts from the performance.) The opening night was gloriously warm England at her best. As daylight became dusk, bats flew and the shadows lengthened until the artificial light took over and darkness had fallen as if timed for the climactic revelation of the bodies of Agamemnon and Cassandra, spotlit blood red.

So professional was the production that we forgot we were at a school play. It came as a shock to learn afterwards that the agonised prophetess Cassandra was reallY Charles Rigby, aged fourteen.

Rumour has it that the National Theatre has plans to produce Agamemnon for the Olivier Theatre, and it was a sign of the Bradfield status that Peter Hall was in the audience. He will be hard put to it to devise a production which could achieve its drama' tic effects with greater economy of means' be as visually exciting and as theatricallY satisfying.

As we left Bradfield we felt we had been received in a fittingly Greek manner. Like Homeric travellers we had been taken into a cultured house and given the very best it had to offer and sent on our way both stimulated and refreshed.