Theatre: Racine’s “Phèdre” – Chania 8th August

Racine’s classic tragedy, “Phédre”, a masterpiece of  French 17th century literature, stems from Plutarch and Virgil and its subject is inspired by Euripides’s “Hippolytus” and Seneca’s “Phaedra”. The unlawful love of Phaedra for Hippolytus, the son of her husband Theseus, is revived through the new translation of poet and translator Stratis Paschalis. The translation  captures the morphology of the original play through a modern language.
Organisation:  Athens Festival, Epidaurus Festival, DIPETHE of Crete

WHERE: Eastern Moat Theatre, Chania
WHEN: 8th -10th August, 21.30

Admission: 15 €
Adults over 65: 12 €

Children up to 18, students, unemployed: 10 €
Disabled: up to 67:  10 €, over 67 free entry

Start of pre-sale at the ticket booths in the Municipal Garden (KIPOS): 1/8/2019
This performance is in the Greek language

The drama of Phaedra is fuelled by a common theme in Racine’s work, of a frustrated passion, here the titular character’s transgressive love for her son-in-law Hippolytus. That corrosive visitation she blames on forces outside herself, such as visited her own mother Pasiphae, mother of the Minotaur. “Venus was on me with her dreaded flames.  The fatal torments of a race she loathes,” she declares, believing herself to be the final vessel of punishment for a cursed line of royalty, stricken with fatal love. Yet Racine also understands such an affliction in clear psychological terms: it’s a logical, if no less unwelcome, problem for a woman with a once-notoriously lecherous husband to be besotted with his elder progeny.

Source: CAM