Word: maenads
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...explodes onto the stage, confidently informing us, "I am the son of God!" Unlike the smirking and leering Winsome Brown '95 (the female Dionysos in the earlier production), Keane demonstrates a rich range of emotions. The audience laughs when he drops self-adoring one-liners, sighs when the Maenad chorus drapes themselves over him, shudders when he hollers in anger. This Dionysos is a creature with genuine power, which makes the foreshadowing of Pentheus's death even darker...
Brown is continually threatening to steal the show. As sleek as the Maenad dancers, as articulate as Gullette, she walks and speaks as one in control of Pandemonium...
...things don't quite pay off: The red flag planted by the speaking Maenad (presumably to signal bloody devastation) might have never been unfurled; the novitiate (Alison Howe on 10/30) sitting on a pillow, singing the Oro supplex, is a bit much. But the production boasts tremendous visual appeal, thanks to a wonderfully spare set by Helen Shaw '98, spiffy costumes by Jessica Jackson '99 and--especially at the play's beginning and end--skillful and tricky lighting, designed by Alan Symonds...
...Roman patron -- This young man has the fury of a devil. Furia didn't simply mean rage; it suggested a state of inspiration, of contact with primeval forces that lie below the surface of culture -- the war god's frenzy, the satyr's beastliness, the erotic abandon of the maenad...