Tantalus Plays

by John Barton

[body] In Tantalus, we return to Ancient Greece to view the origins and outcome of the Trojan Wars with a modern eye. The legend, handed down through the ages in fragments, remains at the core of Western civilization. In this ten-part epic drama, the story is told complete. Achilles, Helen of Troy, Cassandra, Orestes and the heroes of Greek myth face up to the questions and dilemmas of a world at war.

Genres: Plays, Theatre

450 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

John Bernard Adie Barton, CBE (26 November 1928 – 18 January 2018) was a British theatre director and (with Peter Hall) a co-founder of the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Source: Wikipedia

Reviews

[Kylie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't think there's very much point in writing beautiful, lengthy, wordy plays that can't be performed and won't be understood by an audience. Maybe this is controversial, maybe I'm just stupid. But if I, as a someone with a BA in theatre can't follow even most of the references in a story, what hope does someone like my mother have who doesn't even recognize the title "The Oresteia"?

"Tantalus" tries to hard to do too much and doesn't even end up being a very good story. It doesn't do justice to the greek women in proclaims to uplift, and it skirts the currently accepted truths of a great number of the greek heroes. Despite being many years more modern than Aeschylus, it feels much more outdated. It can't be performed as a full cycle of ten plays, and it many of it's ten can't be performed alone.

If you are looking for a rewrite of greek myth, discussion on the rape of women in myth, and a similar poetry to the ancient texts.... I'd recommend picking up Love of the Nightingale by Timberlake Wertenbaker over this.

[Sammy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Truly remarkable. A very wordy read from one of my theatre idols. This is a very challenging piece, both in performance and on the page. It's best to find (his sadly-out-of-print) "The Greeks", which retells the traditional stories. These stories are like the fragments that don't get told. But what poetry, and what insight! Bliss.
(This volume was published by the company which premiered the plays, but this is very much Barton's script, going to press (as it states) before opening night. Barton fell out with the director, his friend and collaborator for 50 years Peter Hall, over the latter's major edits and directorial approaches. So it's safe to say that Barton's script here doesn't reflect what audiences saw on Hall's stage, and that's probably reasonable, given the length among other things.)