There's nothing new under the sun. No, really there isn't. Every drama that unfolds, be it in real life, on the silver screen, the boards, or on the box, in 3D, HD or in the flesh, it's all been done before. Whether it's tragedy you're after, comedy, soap operas, or even reality TV, pretty much everyone got there before you, most likely Shakespeare, that genius of the Play of Life. But even the Bard wasn't always the original and often had to doff his cap to those who were there at the very inception of modern day theatre a couple of millenia ahead of his game.
As a case in point, look no further than Euripides' Helen, which was on the schedule in 412BC in Athens and happens to be the play chosen for the 2011 Greek play (yes, that means in the original Greek) by the undergraduates of King's College, London. It's the very original version of the reality TV rag, I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here!.
Everyone knows Helen, even if it's only that her beauty was so outstanding that her face launched a thousand ships. If ever there were a woman blighted by the Hello! culture of intimating she's your best friend because you know how she conditions her flaxen locks and has men dying (literally) at her feet, then it's Helen. Much misunderstood, desired or derided by the tabloids, and dismissed as a ditzy blonde, Helen is the original Legally Blonde. Angelina Jolie, our modern-day heroine of exquisite beauty, is just following on in her footsteps. And if Angelina is Helen, then Brad Pitt is her husband, Menelaos. We can only imagine Cleopatra's horror when she found out that she wasn't the first beautiful woman to beguile on the shores of Egypt.
So now let's cast back in time to last Friday's matinee performance at KCL of a thoroughly entertaining look at life in the stratosphere of A-List Celebs. Euripides' play assumes that there were actually two Helens - as if one wasn't enough: one who went to Troy and one who was whisked off to while away the war in the relative safety of Egypt. Menelaos, her husband, who fought so valiantly at Troy for her honour and laid it waste, has been shipwrecked - by coincidence in Egypt too! - on his lengthy return across the Med. The meeting scene goes something like this: "I'm Helen, I'm a Celeb"; "Let's Get Out of Here!". Only there's a problem: the old King, who had a soft spot for Helen's untarnished virtue has died, leaving Helen with no one to protect her from the advances of his dashing young son and heir. What to do?
But to see it as two separate Helens, even in one is just an illusion, a floating concept of inspiration papped to appear on the front page of the Achaean Herald, is to miss the point. This is the story of a woman maturing into her own sense of self, of the substance she is behind the probably now fading physical beauty which had men on their knees for her (and women most likely wondering what face cream she used). It's the story of a woman fed up with being taken lightly who longs to be seen for the great heroine she is, rather than the vapid woman loved by the tabloids of old. She's grown wise in her time watching the daily episodes of the Trojan war play out around her, as if she were a character in a national soap, blurring the edges between reality and TV. There's the Helen who was, and the Helen who is. To relate to the former is illusory; to relate to the now is fact. She's grown-up; she is absolutely not the Helen people see or want to see. She's saying to her husband "I am who I am, and that is that". She's defying our preconceptions and getting us to assess relationships anew. Can you say that about yourself?
Euripides' women tend to be strong characters of great wit and resource and Helen here is absolutely no exception. It is she who comes up with the plan for their escape, deploying her beauty and consent to give her hand in marriage to the young Egyptian king, the original young Turk as the currency for his complicity. Is he not the very first young lover to assume that his youth is enough to beguile a woman to give up everything that the married couple have fought for, have given their lives for, have inspired their nation to die for? Those bonds of marriage are unassailable; they are the very knot of companionship. No hot toy boy's ever going to be in the serious contention against that. Not even the King of Egypt.
Helen has to prove herself, not so much to her husband, the brawny hero of Troy but to herself that she has been through a life-changing experience. This is the feminine version of the trials of Odysseus depicted in the Odyssey. Gone is the whim to flirt; gone is the flicking of her hair to tantalise an Army across the sea; gone is the victim mentality of being made to sit idle all day looking down from the parapets on the dramas of mankind.
One of the delights of seeing Helen in the original Greek is that its melodious lilt lulls you into another world made up not of characters but of principles. So it's not about people anymore but about the values by which you live your life. Euripides is as much concerned in Helen with the play of illusion versus reality, celebrity versus shipwrecked nobody, form versus substance, companionship versus lust, honour versus greedy presumption as with opening up our own delusions and beliefs that everything we read in the papers must be true.
Back in the day - my, how time flies, it's pushing 30 years now - that I was involved with the Greek play as an undergraduate, there were no surtitles so you could always tell the school swots because they laughed in Aristophanes' Birds at the jokes on cue. Now, with the advances of technology no one need feel left out from the subtleties as they are beamed up for all to see. Euripides has quite a lot to say which has stood the test of time - for example, "The best prophets are care and common sense" - and seeing it in all its glory up there reminded me of how the Oracle at Delphi had Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself - similarly up there above its entrance.
The Greek play at King's College, London runs on a shoe-string. The cast and crew managed to pull out all the stops making a truly beautiful stage setting of simplicity. There's really no need for anything more than that. When I inherited the role of The Greek Play's Business Manager I took on a financial catastrophe which I solved by having a zero budget policy: nothing would be spent on the production. It's a tradition which has obviously continued none the worse for wear. The costumes were probably the same hand-me-downs from the 1950s, certainly for the Chorus. The young King's Blue Peter inspired headdress looked fetching with a Primark wife-beater and teenage white mini skirt. Helen's first white then black negligees really needed lining to give them that whimsical diaphanous sensuality the role demanded. And you can't really go wrong with a torn piece of sail wrapped round the waist for a shipwrecked sailor. All this added to the wonderfully enthusiastic production and somehow fits with Euripides' tenet that its behind what you see that matters.
The acting was superb. Helen brought all the verve to the role of a weekly soap's lead, while Menelaos, with his drop-dead gorgeous physique obviously hewn from hours of fighting, even if it was only his own laziness in the gym, artfully combined that arrogance of a Celeb reduced to nothing with the royalty of his birth and his own character strengthened by winning the prize he so coveted and deserved. The Chorus was valiant in its attempt but, like the hems on their make-do-and-mend peploi, it went up and down a bit. The Chorus is the continuity announcer, probably the most important element in any broadcast, and it needs to have developed its own confidence to carry it off. As a whole, it lacked the cohesion and self-assuredness to do so, so it became a collection of girls trying their best rather than a unison of dispassionate passion. The choreography of the Chorus avoided the pitfalls of making it look like a throw back to a 1980s Pan's People, creating an elegant and intelligent backdrop for Helen to shine.
What let this production down though was not the amateur nature of a university production as you may expect but something which runs through youth. There was a lack of deportment. I can almost hear the grandmother of the Helen of yore bemoaning the dropping of standards by modern gals. The men were fine, strapping examples of the beauty of the young male form as we so often see in Greek sculpture. But the women lacked that Lucy Clayton elegance, grace and ease. Women's Greek clothing, shapeless on the hanger, is the worst thing possible to drape yourself in if you your body isn't beautifully toned. You're never going to carry it off with the aplomb of the Elgin Marbles, winged Victory or the Caryatids, if you don't have proper foundations. These costumes relied far too heavily on Bravissima underwiring. Please, ladies, if you want to be as beautiful as the older Helen here portrayed you must, really must, do something to keep your figures. The Helen of Euripides' fame knew that; every red carpet celeb knows it: you need to learn to move beautifully, my dears, and the world, just as Helen's was, will forever be your oyster.
Next time the Beeb's looking for a new idea, why doesn't it do something radical and film this outstanding cast in Helen and save itself the bother of trying to reinvent the wheel? Give us all a break from the fluff of modern day personality and show us what true celebrity is.
