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Dateline: 16th January, 2006
The RSC and The War That Still Goes On John Barton, Advisory Director to the RSC, has adapted texts from Thucydides and Plato for an evening which is both dramatic and invites debate - The War That Still Goes On. In this one off evening of performance, rhetoric and debate at the Novello Theatre on Sunday 12th February at 5.30, with a cast drawn from both inside and outside the current RSC London company, Barton’s excoriating take on the seemingly unstoppable escalation into war gives pause for thought in the context of today’s global politics.
Two thousand five hundred years ago, the great war between Athens and Sparta began. It lasted twenty-seven years and involved most of the many Greek states in the Eastern Mediterranean. These shared a common language and were linked by trade and an ever-changing web of alliance.
The history of the Peloponnesian War was written by Thucydides, an Athenian general sent into exile by his countrymen. He was the first man to try to write an objective history of the political complexities of his time, and to make a model, an anatomy, of political behaviour that, he wrote, may be useful in times to come.
His method was to seek eye witnesses for what was said and done, and to report all speakers fairly and fully. When evidence for what was said was lacking or self-contradictory, he did not hesitate to imagine the words, which, as he put it, “the situation seemed to me to require.” He died before the war ended and his book remained unfinished.
The cast includes Clive Francis (Thucydides), Tim West (Socrates), Malcolm Storry (Pericles), Joseph Mydell (Spartan King), James Hayes (Nicias), Joe Dixon (1st Athenian), Jonathan Slinger (2nd Athenian), Jonathan Newth (Melian), Christopher Colquhoun (Alcibiades), Tom Hodgkins (Brasidas/Gylippus), Mark Springer (Corinthian), Michael Jenn (Corvyran), Keith Osborn (Camarinean), William Houston (Cleon), Nigel Betts (Diodotus).
Following this one and a half hour performance, there will be a debate with a panel of historians, politicians, literary scholars and lawyers, including Germaine Greer and Paul Cartlidge, chaired by broadcaster Jon Snow, which will include a question and answer session with the audience. Please note that all three Archive indices are very long and will therefore take some time to download.
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