1 The Living Art of Greek Tragedy Marianne McDonald, Ph.D., MRIA ...

The Oresteia had special appeal in the twentieth century. Max Reinhardt directed a
monumental performance in 1911 in Germany. It was revived at the Grosses Schauspielhaus in
1919 in which he replicated, in part, the ancient Greek theatre. It certainly was large, and a semi-
circular shape, nevertheless his roofed theatre could not duplicate the acoustics of the theatre at
Epidauros. Nevertheless, the Oresteia was a good choice: a monumental play for a monumental
theatre. Reinhardt wanted to revive interest in the Greeks and their values just after the World
War I; but he did so more successfully with his Lysistrata (1908) and his König Ödipus (1910),
his two earlier ventures into Greek drama, besides the even earlier Hofmannsthal’s Ödipus und
die Sphinx (1906). His Oresteia suffered from a lot of cutting. Nevertheless it made good use of
repeated key words and was couched in a language accessible to moderns.
In 1926 Terence Gray directed an Oresteia at Cambridge influenced by Gordon Craig,
with minimal and suggestive sets. He used a single large wheel placed against the back wall to
signify Agamemnon’s chariot.
Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra (1931) linked Aeschylus with Freud and
presented a new emphasis on guilty sexual relationships. The three sections: Homecoming, The
Hunted and The Haunted replicate Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, and Eumenides.
Ezra Mannon (Agamemnon) returns from the civil war. His wife, Christine
(Clytemnestra), has never loved him. There is no reason given for Christine’s hostility against
her husband, neither a murdered child (Iphigenia) nor an imported mistress (Cassandra).
She takes a young lover Adam Brant (Aegisthus), the child of a slave woman, who had been the
mistress of both Ezra’s father and his brother. The father cheated his brother out of his
inheritance, and the brother began to drink and finally committed suicide. When Adam’s mother
was sick and impoverished and needed help, she appealed to Ezra. He refused it and she died.
Adam never forgave Ezra for this, and he swore vengeance.
Lavinia (Vinnie), the Electra stand-in, wears black, and rejects her suitors, even before
Christine kills her father. The reason seems to be a pathological attachment to the father, besides
jealousy, of her mother. She follows her mother to New York to prove that she is having an affair
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