With Michael Cathcart and Peter Evans (director of Phèdre):
Michael: The royal house, incestuous love, a curse, power death. They sound like the ingredients of a good tragedy, don't they? And no one likes a good tragedy better than the Bell Shakespeare company. Its latest production is Phèdre, the story of the Queen of Athens and her obsessive love - her lust really - for her step-son; the young, handsome and innocent Hippolytus. It was written by the 17th century French playwright Jean Racine and is based on tales from Greek mythology. Bell Shakespeare's production of Phèdre has just wound up in Melbourne and it opens at the Sydney Opera House this Friday. And with me in our Sydney studios are the play's director Peter Evans, hi Pete.
Peter: Hi Michael.
Michael: Nice to have you here. And actor Catherine McClements, who plays Phèdre. Hi Catherine.
Catherine: Hi Michael.
Michael: Welcome to the show.
Catherine: Thank you.
Michael: Peter, let's um... in the briefest outline, just give us what the story is.
Peter: Well, I think you summed it up pretty well. It's about - Phèdre is married to King Theseus, who is a great hero and ravisher of women. However, she has tamed him and they've been happily married. But she has an obsessive love for her step-son. Thinking Theseus is dead, she confesses her love and then, of course all hell breaks loose when Theseus is not dead and returns home.
Michael: He shows up. Whoops!
Peter: Sounds like a Greek tragedy, doesn't it?
Michael: It does, just like a Greek tragedy. And does all this action happen on one day, Pete?
Peter: That's right. This is very Aristotelian, this happens in one location in one day with one plot line. Incredibly succinct and tightly structured play. Extraordinary really, the form of it is so sparse and so clear, and so efficient. Ruthlessly efficient you could say.
Michael: When you say Aristotelian, you're referring to the fact that Aristotle had this idea that there were the unities and one of the unities that a play should observe is that the action of a play should actually follow the real time that's elapsed. No one actually observes that, but that was the sort of, general principle, wasn't it?
Peter: Well that's right, that's right. And so in classical drama there are examples of it and of course, Racine was particularly interested in the classical form. And it's interesting for us as a company because of course Shakespeare very rarely followed that, and liked to break the rules all the time. So it's interesting for us as a company to come back to something so formal after the wonderful, kind of, vibrant often chaotic form of a Shakespeare tragedy.
Michael: Now Catherine, when we meet Phèdre in act one, she's pretty tormented isn't she? She's suffering. And here she is madly in love with her step-son Hippolytus, and I get the impression, well she says actually, that it's making her sick.
Catherine: Yes, I mean it's something that she's suppressed for say ten years, we were thinking probably by the time the play begins, so it's the idea that if you suppress a great desire, a great love, that it physically turns you into an ill person. And both she and the other character who she's in love with, Hippolytus, are repressing these great passions. And the play begins with this terrible repression, so both of them, in the opening act, talk about what this is like.
Michael: It's a very modern notion of psychology, isn't it? If you bottle up an emotion it produces other undesirable behaviours.
Catherine: I find the play incredibly modern in its psychological look, particularly at women. I think the difference in a way, is that what was happening in French theatre at the time was that there were actresses. Unlike in England where it was 12 year old boys playing all those great Shakespearean roles. We've got women, and so, in a way I feel that Racine is able to delve into the psychology of his women characters. And it's such a pleasure to play that. I think the play does open up that.
Michael: And yet, Catherine, it's such an unnatural feeling to have. I mean, here she is consumed with this lust that's driving her nuts, for her step-son. So her husband Theseus has had a child by another woman, and I mean, it's not your every day feeling. We should say, she doesn't act on this. What struck me after I'd seen the play is that actually nobody did anything. All people had were feelings, but they're guilty of, as if they'd actually seen it through.
Catherine: Hmm. I think it's the concept too, at the time that Racine was dealing with, that the idea of the sin of thought, that if you think the idea, if you're driven by the thought it's also considered wrong. And even if you don't play it out, as long as you keep it secret you find that once you start telling people about it, then that is as dynamic and dramatic as actually acting on the thought. No, Phèdre is actually a really nice, good person. [laughs] Everyone else calls her this diabolical woman and all this stuff, but in fact what she's trying to do is maintain a sort of... to be considered a good person. She doesn't want to go to hell.
Michael: Well, okay, but you could also see her as a queen who has no regard for anybody else. Who is so caught up with her own lusts and desires that she thinks she's the only story in town. She doesn't expect other people, lesser beings, in town to live like this or think like this.
Catherine: Well the play is named after her.
[laughs]
Peter: Michael, you're on very dangerous territory!
[Catherine laughs]
Michael: [laughing] There's no point in asking the actress if there's anything wrong with her character! That's rule 101. [laughs] Peter, let's talk to the director again. Peter, I hadn't actually thought about it until this moment, but nobody actually does anything. No sin has actually been committed, there are only sins of thought. How did you think about that aspect of the play?
Peter: I find it extraordinary. And it's often said about this play, it's a play about naming. And as Catherine was saying, once it's voiced, the thing's been named then the chaos ensumes. And you're quite right, Phèdre at one stage says she's going to hell, she's experienced no gratification. She hasn't got anything out of her sins at all. Which is fascinating, that when you're talking about her being a queen, she is still incredibly aware of the public. That although it's a very small play in a lot of ways, and with very few characters, the sense of the outside world, the sense of the community and the politics of this world, and in a way, their fame and their legacies and what will happen to these characters is incredibly relevant to them. And they think and talk about quite a lot.
Michael: Which is also preserving another aspect of all those Greek plays, which is about what's happening in the big house where the royal family and how they relate to the people on the street. It's always, ultimately, about politics.
Peter: That's right. And this play's very interesting in that it's a five act play but for three acts, it really is a political drama and it's about jostling for power once the news that Theseus is dead. It's really kind of three acts of a political drama, that then disintegrates into a very, very domestic drama. But being played out by incredibly famous people, and people that are aware of their mythologies, and what the potential legacy of their mythologies will be.
Michael: This is Books and Arts Daily on RN, and we're talking about Phèdre the play by Jean Racine, the 17th century French playwright. It's being performed by Bell Shakespeare, it's about to open in Sydney having just had a season in Melbourne. And with me are the actor playing Phèdre, Catherine McClements, and the director of the show, Peter Evans. Peter, it's based, I don't know whether it's wholly based or at least partly based on a play by Euripides which is actually called Hippolytus, a play I love actually, I think it's a wonderful play. And it's quite different, though, where the moral judgement falls because in the Hippolytus play, the finger of judgement is pointed at Hippolytus who is seen as a man who is, well intemperate, he's so chaste he's so pure of spirit and he's kind of deranging all the people around him because he's just too good to be healthy, really. So the judgement switches from him to... Well, where does it switch? I suppose... is there a judgement here, a moral judgement?
Peter: This is very interesting. We spent a lot of time talking about this because it's much less clear in the Racine. Of course, in the Euripides the Gods are on stage and the Gods are actually present and the Gods are punishing either Phèdre for her love or lust, or Hippolytus for his chasteness that borders on misogyny I think in the Euripides.
Michael: Oh absolutely. It is misogyny, he gives that speech in which he says 'Oh Gods, why does the way in which a man has to be born is women, we come into the world through women, how gross is that?' I mean, that's misogyny of the first order.
Peter: Absolutely. Whereas, Racine gives Hippolytus a love. Gives him a woman that he has fallen in love with, which complicates things hugely. But he also removes the Gods psychically from the stage and even though they are incredibly present, and both Phèdre in particular, and Theseus, speak to their Gods and ask for help, their placement in the world is much less clear. And you can see it's a world where they're much more ambiguous relationship they have with their Gods. In fact, Theseus has a wonderful line near the end where he says you know, the favour of the Gods terrifies me. Is the sense, and let me quote also, 'don't you worry that the Gods may hate you enough, aren't you what you wish for', which is an extraordinary idea that I think Racine is playing with in this play. And so the placement of the Gods in this play makes it a much more ambiguous play than the Euripides.
Michael: Hmm. Catherine, like all Greek plays, this is a French play but it's based on a Greek model, it's actually very simple in its structure. It's got one, two, three, four, five beats and then you all go home. Do you have a clear sense of these turning points, because she's suddenly... she does turn on a pin, doesn't she?
Catherine: Yes, I think, as we were rehearsing the play, I was taken by the Phèdre constantly talking about moments: this happened, and then in a moment it turned around, I was getting married to Theseus and in that moment the ceremony was over, suddenly Hippolytus was there. And the play does turn on these great little dramatic moments, you know, you think it's going one way and then suddenly something will happen and it changes the course of the play. And then they call that fate, so there's these great dramatic moments when you realise Theseus is alive and she comes out and, well I won't give away the end, though I imagine everyone sort of knows what goes on... the end... but...
Michael: Oh, the story's thousands of years old, give away the end for goodness sake!
Catherine: [laughs] Oh come on, there's some young people surely who don't know! But, there are these... it's a classic story in that way. Within the French, what they do is these great little moments and then there's characters speaking in these long, beautiful poetic speeches about what it's like to exist in that moment, what is happening for them in that moment. And that's where Ted Hughes comes into play as far as his translation, the poetisism and the muscularity of his translation of this play is extraordinary. And so all these, I think which the French call 'tirade', which is like tirades these actors talk in these speeches that are so powerful and potent, that's the sort of structure of the play.
Michael: They're not necessarily potent, I mean, badly handled they could just become position statements because quite a lot of the play is not people interacting, it's people telling you where they're at in their lives, and this is particularly evident in the first 20 minutes, Peter, which I reckon is a very challenging part of the play because you have 20 minutes of set up, of people basically giving you back story before the play really takes off. That's a tough part of the play to direct.
Peter: Absolutely, absolutely. And we spent an awful lot of time trying to work out what it is because for Racine's audience and for the Greek's and for the Roman's, its back story would all be very well known with their classical education would have been such, that with all these references and all these back stories would have been very strong. And they would've been listening to what Racine had done had slightly changed, or the different spin that each writer would bring. Whereas we're assuming with our audience that a lot of this information might be new, or might have a vague knowledge of it. And so we wanted to make it absolutely crystal clear, and give over that first 20 minutes to make absolutely sure that we had a very strong bed on which to sit the play. And so I think what you're alluding to is that for this particular production we've kept it incredibly still and it's all just about the language and just about the stories. And I think that, from what I can see, that ended up being a wise decision because peoplecan settle in, they get the information they need and then the play quietly expands and unravels after that.
Michael: There is some disagreement, to be candid, about whether you've made the right decision, because the actors just sit there and talk. And The Age review loved it, thought it was fantastic. But on the night, there was some people who thought it was just too static and really did want a bit more action. Was there part of you that was thinking of going the other way?
Peter: We actually spent the first couple of weeks with an awful lot of action going on, and as the process went on, we stripped it back and stripped it back more and more and more, until we ended up with this completely static and just all about text. I'm sure any decision like that is going to divide some people, but for me, I find it absolutely beautiful and gets us into the right frame of mind for what us quite an unusual form. We don't see a lot of theatre like this anymore. And so it gets people into a kind of space where they're really focusing on the text and the way these stories are unravelling.
Michael: Catherine McClements, everything goes wrong really, when Phèdre learns that Theseus, her husband, is not dead. He hasn't died on his adventures. And he strides into the palace and basically says, 'what the hell is going on here?' What's her thinking at that moment?
Catherine: Well I think that Phèdre is not an emancipated woman in the way we say. She is very much a product of that world, and she believes that she creates her husband's honour. And so if anyone reveals what she has done, then disaster will be on her husband and that it's her fault. And so in that way, I found it really interesting in the reading of Phèdre, that she is a creation of that, well some people might call it a patriarchal society, I don't know, some people call it marriage. But she is very much a part of that, so when he returns, the horror of what she has done, the horror of the reveal, as Pete said... if you speak it, if you say it, then suddenly it's alive in front of you. And so once she reveals her stepson, what she's feeling, then it becomes a thing in itself. It is very difficult to suppress.
Michael: Yes, and she feels sickened because she's brought shame on his house. Or shame on him.
Catherine: On his house, yes. And 'on his legacy and on my children's legacy'. I mean, it's very true. But your responsibility to family, and also the idea that because these characters are myth makers. Her grandfather is the sun, she is part of a lineage of Gods and famous people. And even though she's really the younger sister of a famous person, she's the one who has to keep that sort of bouyant. And every woman in her family has a dreadful story to tell. You know, the story of her mother, the story of her sister, abandoned on the beach and died there... is part of what she sees, her legacy. She's trying to very much get out of, but falls right in there.
Michael: If there is a villain in this story, it's Oenone, who is, what's her title, she's Phèdre's nurse or her servant, I guess. Tell us about her.
Catherine: Yes, it's a really beautiful relationship I find, it is a nurse, it's that sort of classical role in a lot of French drama of the queen with that nurse character. Who is behind the scenes, mechanising things, organising stuff. And in this, I think Oenone is a character who is open to a lot of interpretations and that's why it would be great to see Phèdre, for me, lots of times, because you can see, as in all great classic roles, it can be interpreted in many ways. And Oenone can be interpreted in that conniving way, someone who's just trying to keep herself alive by keeping her mistress alive.
Michael: That's all I can see! I mean, how else could you play her?
Catherine: Well, there's an incredible love for Phèdre and incredible distress at her pain and agony, and that she's driven by love of the other person and not by her sense of survival. Because Hippolytus' servant advises him to reveal his love, but it all turns out fine. [all laugh] Oenone suggests that I should do the same, but because it's unrequited, it doesn't turn out so good. And because the nature of who Phèdre is, it's like being the nurse maid of Amy Winehouse or someone I imagine. You know, what ever advice you may give, it doesn't turn out so great.
Michael: [laughs] Well, it's a great ad for a well made play. Thanks to both of you for coming in and having a chat.
Peter: Thanks Michael.
Catherine: Thank you.