The Bacchae

Published Tuesday 14 August 2007 at 11:15 by Jeremy Austin

Descending upside-down from the top of the stage, bare bottom winking at the audience, Alan Cumming in spectacular fashion announces his return to the Scottish stage.

‘I’m back,’ he says, rolling over onto his front when he finally lands. In his gold lame skirt and top with heavy make-up and tousled dark locks he looks less like a God and more like a slutty girl.

David Greig’s adaptation of Ian Ruffell’s literal translation spends the first half an hour or so stunning its audience. His Greek chorus, The Bacchae, are a gospel choir and Cumming’s Dionysus is a rock singer, grasping the mic and commanding Tim Sutton’s strong songs with his even stronger voice.

There are explosions, gags, falling spear-like flowers - the energy is relentless. Or rather it isn’t. Following Pentheus’ murder at the hands of his mother Agave and the dancing women, the Maends, the pace and power of the piece grinds to a halt. The gags stop as do the effects and the probably last third of the play grinds on like any bog-standard adaptation of Euripides’ greatest play.

That Cumming too is largely absent from hereon in is probably no coincidence. Like one of the Maenads he seems posessed by the spirit of Dionysus. Indeed, it is often difficult to decide whether some of the quips and asides from Scotland’s self-proclaimed ‘pansexual’ actor are meant for the god or for the man playing him.

This is Cumming’s show, the other actors are merely players within it. Tony Curran is a thuggish, Scottish gangster as Pentheus while Paola Dionisotti gives a journeyman performance as his mother Agave.

While both Greig’s adaptation is both spectacular and memorable in parts, it ultimately disappoints.