Imagine that word, Bacchae, repeated over and over again fifty times, slowly morphing into the word Bocce Bocce Bocce Boccee… and you’d have a pretty good verbal rendition of a typical Philip Glass piece.  Diligent readers of these written notifications will already be familiar with the basics of music: harmony and melody, the influence of vulgarity in classical music, and the tendency of contemporary composers to find other musical mechanisms besides simple harmony and melody with which to express themselves.  Philip Glass continues this tradition by using repetition and slight variation on themes as his tools for expression.  So you could say he is a traditional contemporary composer.  And as his most known works with Errol Morris make clear, Glass is an artist who has a talent for choosing collaborators with a similar aesthetic.

When tonight’s Shakespeare in the Park performance of Bacchae began with heavy drums and repetitive melody, I became entranced by the beating sounds and subtle harmonies, forgetting entirely my previous expectation of boring repetitive irritating obvious music in the boring repetitive irritating obvious modern tradition.  The setting of Shakespeare in the Park is beautiful, with Belvedere Castle lit up on a hill behind the stage.  For a few moments, everything: the lighting, the set design, music, setting, and even the amphitheater seating, came together in as close as one can get to Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk without actually getting close at all.  Then the clean-cut curly haired kid walked out on stage in jeans, and my mind drifted away from Gesamtkunstwerk.

We live in a particular period of time with particular changing social values.  You could say we live in interesting times, but isn’t it likely that all times are interesting to those who are interested in them?  Gender is in the middle of bending; woman’s liberation has taken a new turn away from direct competition with men;  single mothers are reworking of the meaning of the term nuclear family;  works involving race are given preference in almost every public performance venue thereby proving a pervasive inequality;  technological progress has made birth unnecessary for life; the American tradition of informality has reached a certain apex with the glorification of underwear as outerwear from which we can only retreat if we are not to go fully nude; the hypocrisy of human rights has all but officially imploded;  and the notions of nation-states and borders are beginning to seem artificial and oppressive.

All these seemingly modern concepts and conflicts lie latent within the original 5th century BC Greek tragedy of Euripedes’ Bacchae, a story involving divine retribution for the lack of fealty from mankind.  A skilled director would have so much high potential raw material to work with if putting it on stage in today’s social context.  But as should have been irritatingly predictable and obvious, Philip Glass’s collaborator in this Shakespeare on the Park production is irritatingly predictable and obvious.

Not even the tragedy’s debauched women in the mountains, cross-dressing kings, broken urban families, surrogate birthing, savage murder, Asian invasions, or old blind black men in sequin-lined pants can make up for unimaginative and heavy-handed directing.  It’s not that the director, Philip Glass’ ex-wife, didn’t try to be meaningful and relevant.  It’s that she tried so hard she didn’t even come close at all.  Doesn’t she know you can’t escape The Fates?