CLASSICAL ASSOCIATION

Evening Star, Issue 21822, 11 September 1934, Page 6

CLASSICAL ASSOCIATION

I IPHIGENIA IN TAURIS ’ AN ENJOYABLE .READING A large audience greeted the annual Greek play-reading before the Classical Association in the Museum lecture room last evening, when Gilbert Murray’s translation of the ‘ Ipbigenia Among the Taurians ’ of Euripides was given by Mr James Heming s group of readers. In some introductory remarks .Professor Adams said that to a modern audience this was probably the most delightful of the plays of Euripides. Strictly it was not a tragedy, but an adventure play, which, though it contained tragic scones, ended happily. In antiquity-, too, it had been much admired, Aristotle mentioning it no fewer than five times in bis ‘ Poetics,' and always with approval. It bad an excellent plot, and the characters were all well drawn.

The scene was laid in the land of the semi-barbarous Tnnn’nns, now known as the Crimea. From the temple of Artemis in the background Ipbigenia enters, explaining in the prologue that when her. father, Agameinmon, was in the very act of sacrificing her to Artemis, the goddess had secretly intervened, putting in her place a deer and transporting her to the land of the Taurians to be her priestess there. After she has re-entered the temple her brother Orestes appears along with his friend Pyladus. Ever since he has avenged the death of his father Agameinmon, by slaying his mother, he .had been afflicted with fits of raadnesSj and the oracle at Delphi had told him that if he went to the land of the Taurians and brought away the sacred image of Artemis there he would be freed from his madness. After examining the temple the two men withdraw, intending to return at night for the statue. Soon, however, a herdsman enters, giving a vivid account of the capture of the two Greeks. In accordance with the custom of the country they are to he sacrificed to Artemis after being first consecrated by her priestess, Ipbigenia. In a famous recognition scene, Ipbigenia discovers the identity of her brother, Orestes, whom she had not seen since be was a child; and the rest of the play consists in the exciting measures they take for their escape, which in the end they successfully contrive. Miss Jessie M'Lcnnan is to be congratulated on the satisfying sincerity of her reading of the name part. Iphigenia’s heart is torn with the conflicting emotions of “ hatred of the Greece that had wronged her and love of the Greece that is her only home,” and Miss M’Eennan portrayed very effectively the warm-hearted, affectionate sister who would gladly give her life if need be to save her brother, in spite of all she had suffered at the hands of her own father and countrymen. As Orestes, Mr H. W. Hunter brought out well the essential nobility of the young prince’s character, which triumphs over the inevitable gloom of one whose fate it has been to be a matricide. But his greatest opportunity, which he turned to good account, was in the exciting speech of the messenger who announces the escape of the priestess and the prisoners. Similarly, Mr James Fleming had more scope in the part of the herdsman than in Pylades, and delivered his vivid piece of narrative with ' splendid realism. Thoas, King of the Taurians, apart from his unpleasant habit of killing all strangers, is made by Euripides to have a by no means unattractive personality, which was interpreted with full sympathy by Mr P. J. Gair. The lyrics in this play are particularly fine, “ most of them are full of sea light and the clash of waters,” and Mrs Gair succeeded in giving them a real value even to a modern audience by maintaining an artistic balance between the appeal of their form and the significance of their content. The President of the association (Mr W. J. Morrell), in moving a vote of thanks to the readers, complimented them on their success in making a play of the fifth century before Christ still live to a twentieth century audience.