Escape to ANCIENT GREECE

Tired of contemplating the demise of democracy?

- DANIEL MENDELSOHN

"I fear the Greeks even when they're bringing gifts," a Trojan priest exclaims early on Lin Virgil's Aeneid, trying to persuade his countrymen that there's something fishy about the giant wooden horse that has mysteriously materialized in front of their city's gates. That line of the Latin epic has, over the millennia, morphed into a familiar saying: "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts." And indeed, there are so many Greek gifts piling up on our cultural doorstep-stage performances of Greek tragedies, film adaptations of Greek epics, and a parade of novels based on Greek myths—that it's hard not to be just a bit wary.

The next six months alone are studded with high-profile performances on both sides of the Atlantic based on the greatest ancient dramas. The upcoming London theatrical season boasts the staging of two Sophocles plays: Elektra, with Brie Larson, and Oedipus Rex, which Aristotle considered the greatest of all tragedies. The latter, starring Rami Malek in his UK stage debut as the tragic king fated to kill his father and marry his mother, opens on the heels of a contemporary version of the tragedy, directed by Robert Icke, whose earlier foray into Greek drama was a starkly updated version of Aeschylus's great revenge trilogy Oresteia at the Park Avenue Armory in 2022.