Aeschylus’ The Persians is one of the oldest and most interesting plays in Western history, being unique among surviving ancient Athenian plays in being set entirely outside the Greek speaking world, and in unique among tragedies in being about current events rather than a mythological subject. The play premiered in 472 BCE, just eight years after the battle of Salamis that prompts the action. I’ve read the play several times, but getting to see it produced live from the theatre at Epidaurus by the National Theatre of Greece was a once in a lifetime experience (though I wish they would put up a video version so I could re-watch the performance, and perhaps teach from it).

The Persians is set in the city of Susa, capital of the Persian empire, in 480 BCE. King Xerxes has taken a massive army and navy, with most of the young men of the empire, to invade Athens. The chorus of aging Persian nobles worries about the progress of the campaign, and when Atossa—the queen mother and widow of the previous king Darius the Great—enters and tells them her prophetic dreams, it strengthens the air of foreboding. Shortly, a messenger arrives with news of the destruction of the army and navy. He lists all the nobles/generals who have died, then tells how the Greeks lured the numerically superior Persian navy into a trap and destroyed the entire armada. Atossa and the chorus are stunned and dismayed, and they summon the spirit of Darius from the underworld to advise them and explain how such catastrophe could have come about. He tells them that the gods were angered by Xerxes’ hubris in building a bridge to obstruct the Hellespont, and so they have doomed his campaign. After Darius returns to the dead, Xerxes himself arrives and he and the chorus lament the tragedy. Xerxes blames himself for the defeat, and repeatedly wishes the gods had killed him along with his soldiers.

The National Theatre of Greece performed the play as their first ever livestream from the ancient theatre at Epidaurus, one of the few surviving ancient theatres from Greece. Directed by Dimitris Lignadis, it was an incredible show. One of the most striking things about the show was the complex blend of classical declamation and frenetic activity. Atossa and Darius in particular performed largely in a traditional, almost archaic style where they would face toward the audience and speak their lines—even dialogue directed at another character—toward the auditorium (or the theatron as it was known in ancient Greek theatres).

Generally, this performance style has lost popularity in favor of more naturalistic performance styles, and I usually find it stilted and wooden. However, in this production, there were brilliant hints where this highly stylized approach broke down, indicating a complexity behind the performance choice. The best instance of this is when Atossa and the spirit of Darius are speaking to one another, and she is seeking his guidance. The actors stood on either side of the entrance through the center back of the set, speaking to one another but facing the audience and declaiming their lines. But at one point, Atossa turns and takes a step toward the ghost of her beloved husband, and he holds up one hand to stop her. It was such a simple gesture, but in her turning toward him we saw the breakdown of the queenly faced and a revelation that she is a human being who wants the comfort of her beloved partner. And in his gesture stopping her, we see the reminder that he is dead, and they cannot comfort one another.

This declamatory style was counterbalanced by wild, passionate performances that raised the adrenaline and infected the audience with the actors’ emotions. The first instance of a really high energy passion was when the messenger—who I thought gave one of the most impressive performance of the night—recounted the battle of Salamis. At one point, he repeats the war cry of the Greek army before they attacked the Persians, a war cry exhorting the Greeks to fight for their homes, their families, their gods, and their liberty. In delivering this speech, the messenger picked up one of the long staffs the chorus used extensively in their choreography, and he brandished it like a Greek spear, screaming the war cry at the top of his lungs.

The visceral performance clearly inspired the (mostly) Greek live audience who began applauding the speech part way through. They also applauded earlier in the play when the chorus reluctantly answers Atossa’s question about who rules Greece. The chorus tells her that the Greeks are slaves to no one, and the audience burst into applause. That was one of the fascinating things about seeing the play streamed live from Greece, was hearing those occasional audience reactions. Obviously for democratic 5^th century BCE Athens and for an audience that would have included many veterans of Salamis, Aeschylus’ patriotic gestures—Athenians as slaves to no one, the stirring battle cry urging Greeks to protect what they hold most dear—would not have gone unappreciated. This would have hit emotional chords with the original audience. And while we can consciously be aware that these lines may stir Greek pride even to today, it’s a different experience to hear an audience react with the same kind of pride and patriotism that their ancestors would have felt watching the play almost  2,500 years ago.