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The Bacchae

 
Alec Martin Review by Alec Martin 3 Published: 10 Aug 2025 Assembly Roxy Show Dates: 31 Jul 2025-24 Aug 2025

Can Bacchic frenzy really be conjured by a single body? Ewan Downie’s solo Bacchae, guided by director Ian Spink, answers mostly yes. The performer delivers a stripped-back act of storytelling, physical theatre and ancient song that’s potent and precise, if sometimes tonally unadventurous.

A skilful, immersive, musically alive retelling that honours Euripides with care and craft

Downie slips between Dionysos, Pentheus and Agave, voice and stance clicking cleanly into each new mask. The staging is utilitarian – tilted strip lights in cages, a couple of symbolic props – and it suits the intent: no distractions, just a performer bending an ancient myth into a tight 55-minute arc. The sound world hums, the movement vocabulary is disciplined rather than madcap, and the ritual frame is well delivered.

Yet the production’s fidelity is both virtue and limit. Contemporary resonances – gender flux, the human/animal blur, the slippage between victim and perpetrator – are present but rarely pressed; we sense them rather than grapple with them. Tonally, the show leans into solemnity, a near-unbroken chant of repression and release that can feel a little gruelling as it proceeds. You long, just once or twice, for irreverent bite or Dionysian swagger to roughen the ritual.

The solo form, boldly chosen, trims away the power offered by a chorus’s tumult. Downie narrates the story with clarity and control, but without bodies to tear and witness, frenzy becomes an imagined weather rather than a visceral storm. Still, there are some passages that contain real force – those ancient songs carry a raw resonance.

Overall, it’s a skilful, immersive, musically alive retelling that honours Euripides with care and craft. Some will find it satisfyingly classical; others may wish it took bigger risks and let the god off the leash.

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The Blurb:

An outcast god. A powerless king. A mother who kills her only son. Glasgow's acclaimed Company of Wolves present an earth-shattering solo retelling of the myth of Dionysos: an epic of rejection, vengeance and rebirth told through story, dance and ancient song. Written and performed by Ewan Downie, The Bacchae blurs the lines between binaries: human and animal, male and female, victim and perpetrator, and takes us on a transformative journey from repression and denial to renewal and release. A hymn of rebirth for our shattered selves. **** (Herald). **** (Times). 'Heart-shuddering' (Exeunt, on Achilles).