I found the play very powerful. It is re-occurring to me occasionally, in a nice way, for pondering. I’m mulling over the various stages and sets, movements, statements and songs. It really is a very special and unique rendition of the power of the primal group dynamic to bring people into inhumane acts and loss of sense-of-self. The setting is fabulous for creating an atmosphere of mystery and anticipation of ominous happenings.
Review by Elspeth Campbell
At the start of the show, as the performers came down towards us, the audience, I thought I had stumbled on people who had escaped somewhere into a forest but didn’t know they had.
The atmosphere was both haunting and eerie and I wanted to really be a part of it – but I also wanted nothing to do with it. I felt that once I was in this, I could never escape it, could never return to the ordinary world.
I was really impressed with how I always knew where in the scene I should be looking… so everything felt concentrated… and that drew me in and allowed me to be sucked into the Bacchae world. Although the performers would every so often fade into the background, I was never taken away from a focussed scene.
I forgot that I was in a forest. I felt I was in the home where the performers lived… but what was this home?
It was also so beautiful the way each character slid between being a sinister, wise character and being a really small child. This made me giggle but it also made me feel unnerved.
Review by Bar Groisman
in situ: continues its tradition of site-specific theatre with the hugely impressive The Bacchae set in the equally impressive setting of Wandlebury Woods.
The sensory journey opens with the audience being led on a short but none-the-less transformative journey to Wormwood Hill. The layering-on continues with a distant Tannoy proclamation hitting us immediately with other-worldliness. This is amplified by the visual of actors emergent on high, descending to form a close contact corridor as you pass into the land of the Bacchae.
Is the effect disconcerting? Slightly. Is that blood I see? Yes, yes it is. Are these figures demonic or manic? Not so sure. Is it exciting? Most definitely.
At the top of the mount the play begins to hit its stride. The tragic tale emerges with revolving and evolving images overlapped with visuals of actors spread at a distance then collapsing into high intensity nuclei. The attack – or is it now delightful playing – on the senses continues with shattered glimpses of phrases transforming to chorus, transforming to song, transforming to expertly-acted scene, then back to shattered glimpses. The imagery of sound and stage is further enhanced by evolving installation that adds a dynamic physical presence to further amplify the sense of tragedy. And it is tragic – a tragic, tragic tale – but set in such beauty.
How am I feeling? Privileged to have experienced it. Thank you in situ: so very much for the journey.
Review by Mat Wollerton
I absolutely loved the in situ: theatre performance at Wandlebury Country Park. The walk to the site was atmospheric and created an excited anticipation. The opening scene was second-to-none – striking, moving, disturbing. Throughout the performance, the environment was used beautifully and in very exciting ways, and the changing light from the setting sun made the experience mesmerising. Despite the spread-out nature of the production, the intensity and focus of the performance never dropped. The end scene, under the rising moon, took my breath away. Beautiful, thought-provoking, touching evening.
Anonymous written review
For me there are many stand-out moments.
At the start, as we the audience stood at the foot of the hill, I was wondering whether there was anybody else there at all, any actors, anybody.
Then we heard a voice through a loudspeaker, which could have come from anywhere but in fact came from the top of the hill. Then the actors started to walk down the hill. They kept coming towards us, and kept coming and coming. There was this really intense feeling that we the audience were going to get trampled on…
Another strong memory is of the relationship between the white rocks of the installation and the actors all dressed in white. When the actors were scattered on the hill, it was as if they themselves were the white rocks, as if they themselves were part of the installation.
I also loved the use of space. Having actors gathered round, or behind the trees, or in among the rocks of the installation… there was a moment when actors were kneeling around a tree stump and there was something particularly intimate and powerful about that.
At the end, the loudspeaker voice came through again, and the actors in white once more walked down towards us… then paused in a circle around the stones in a ceremonial moment of remembrance, while the two actors playing Cadmus and Agave walked away from the scene.
As those actors walked away, the woman was wearing a top with a red flower embroidered on the back.
To me, it looked as if she had been shot, and the red was her blood. So, having throughout the play the theme of blood and gore, it was as if death had come to her too.
Finally, as we the audience walked away from the performance, we were directed to halt and look up to see the actors hidden among the trees, to hear the sound of their chanting voices. As if, having completed the ceremony that was the performance, they had once again become part of the scenery and the landscape.
Review by Rachael Duthie
Going to see The Bacchae at Wandlebury Park was like becoming more and more immersed in a completely different world, transported to ancient Greece in a very very physical way.
I remember long silences at the beginning, then seeing all the actors progressing very slowly down the hill towards us. And gradually, as we the audience joined the actors at the top of the hill, it felt like a sacred place.
Just as the women in The Bacchae did, we found ourselves in the hills, in ancient woodland. It’s very hard to put into words, the mixture of faces and voices, and the way everyone – actors and audience – were together as a whole group.
At the start, Dionysus was seductive, playful, humorous. But the mood gradually became much darker, with the brutalism, the terror, the being torn apart of both the cattle and Pentheus himself. It all had a gruesomeness and horror, made all the more visceral because we the audience were in the centre of it all.
Impactful too were the eye-witness accounts we were hearing – different people’s experiences, telling the story as it was happening to them. That gave the scenes an aliveness, a clarity. So even though the production had this wonderful exploratory and experimental feel to it, there was also clarity about the horror of the story.
It was an experience of great contrasts. There were times when everyone came together in unified choral speaking, and there were times when there was chaos.
There were times when things were very very physical and there were times when things were very very poetic.
And then, coming out of all that, when we the audience and the cast processed down the hill at the end of the play, we saw sunny clearings with cows… a setting for the parting of the ways between Cadmus and Agave. Again, so many difference perspectives.
What surprised me was how moving it all was. I am familiar with The Bacchae, having looked at it for A level. But the loss of Pentheus, the way he was torn apart, his mother gradually ‘coming to’ and realising what she had done, the sculpted rocks symbolising the part of Pentheus’s body… it was very moving.
The production itself was Dionysian. It didn’t have the rigidity of Pentheus, it wasn’t pre-thought-out by a man with clipboard instructions. Fitting with the wildness of the location and the essence of Dionysus, there was clearly something wild at the heart of it all.
It also, to me, conveyed a different take on morality, a different take on what happens if you offend the gods, if you display the arrogance and rigidity of Pentheus. The play showed what happens to you – and it’s not neat and tidy, nice and comforting!
Review by Joseph Kao
The performance was intimate, tender, funny, controlled, considered… and very moving.
The invisibly-moving human tableaux descending Wormwood Hill at dusk were very moving indeed; I lamented that more people wouldn’t witness it.
The additional sculpture enhanced the work, effectively making the show so much more than the sum of its parts.
I so appreciate the huge amount of work involved, the attention to detail – and the resilience to rain!
I hope both audience and cast have a huge sense of satisfaction in making this, and in reflecting on and enjoying the memory of it – for years to come.
Review by Jennie Ingram
