Author: John Barton
Year: 2000
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ISBNs:
9781840024838
1840024836 |
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From the publisher (source: The Internet Book List):
When theatre began, two and a half millennia ago in ancient Greece, it drew from a well of even older myths, the Great Epic cycle. These myths were Europe's first image of the comedy and tragedy of the human enterprise. Stories and characters from the beginning of out imagination inspired John Barton to write the great cycle of human life Tantalus, and epic theatre myth of the new millennium.
Its subject is the Trojan War, a crusade which becomes a catastrophe. Helen of Troy - was she really the cause of this ten-year war? Agamemnon's anguish - did he have to kill his daughter to start the war? Was Clytemnestra's murderous revenge justified? A wooden horse - how can it destroy a great city? Heroes humbled, children hurt, mothers and fathers bereaved, entire nations shaken and rebuilt - all pass through this kaleidoscope of human fate.
Tantalus is as timeless as any classic. The ten plays which stake out its story are fast, direct, witty and colloquial, moving from irony to raw epic power, from pain to celebration. They ask questions which we still ask today: "Who is to blame? What is the truth? Could it be otherwise?"
Contents:
- Prologue: Zeus
- Part I: The Outbreak of War
- Apollo
- Telephus
- Iphigenia
- Part II: The War
- Neoptolemus
- Priam
- Odysseus
- Cassandra
- Part III: The Homecoming
- Epilogue: Zeus
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