Programme extracts for Phèdre
An illustrated programme for Phèdre is available to pre-order from the National Theatre Bookshop and online when you buy your tickets, priced at £3.00. From 4 June it will be available to buy in person. As well as biographies of cast and production team, and Catherine Ashmore's photographs of them in rehearsal, it contains specially commissioned articles by three prominent writers: Mary Beard on the myths of Hippolytus, Phèdre and Theseus and how they have been used through history; Michael Hawcroft on Racine and Phèdre; and Blake Morrison on Ted Hughes and his version of Phédre.
'A Myth of Desire'
Mary Beard
The ancient myth of Hippolytus and Phaedra is a myth of desire. It asks us to reflect not only on the terrible consequences of incestuous passion, dysfunctional love, and perverted celibacy – but also on their conflicting explanations. How do we explain the destructive power of passion? Who is to blame when love goes wrong?
Copyright Mary Beard 2009
'Racine and Phèdre'
Michael Hawcroft
In 1688 La Bruyère attempted to conjure up what it was like to watch the century’s best tragedies: “A tragedy takes hold of your heart from the very beginning and throughout its whole length hardly leaves you time to breathe and recover, or if it offers you some respite, it is in order to plunge you once again into new abysses and new alarms. It leads you through pity to terror or through terror to pity, and takes you on a journey of tears, sobbing, uncertainty, hope, anxiety, surprise and horror right up to the catastrophe”. La Bruyère’s description gives us a sense of the unrelentingly visceral experience that dramatists like Racine aimed to offer their audiences.
Copyright Michael Hawcroft 2009
'Ted Hughes and Phèdre'
Blake Morrison
Hughes characterised his translation as “straight (near literal) and as plain as Racine”. But the straightness has a strongly northern accent: “Very plain and rough,” he told another friend , “[it] struck me after that my tuning fork was somewhere within the Calder Valley. Though it’s far from dialect.” No matter how faithful he is to Racine’s text, he leaves his own stamp on it, with powerfully visual and visceral images taking the place of abstraction.
Copyright Blake Morrison 2009
