Tony Harrison Critical Essay | Tony Harrison

Critical Essay by Carol Chillington Rutter

SOURCE: “Harrison, Herakles, and Wailing Women: ‘Labourers’ at Delphi,” in New Theatre Quarterly, Vol. 13, May, 1997, pp. 133-43.

[In the following essay, Rutter analyzes Harrison's The Labourers of Herakles and asserts that “To this female spectator in the audience Harrison's theatrical practice seems progressively at odds with his official profeminism.”]

As well as being a widely published poet, Tony Harrison is well known as a dramatist for his reworkings of classical materials, from ancient Greek to medieval. When he was invited to contribute a play for the eighth International Meeting on Ancient Greek Drama, on the theme of ‘Crossing Millennia’, to be held at the European Cultural Centre of Delphi in August 1995, he chose to present a version of The Labourers of Herakles set on a building site—a building site the Greek sponsors specially ‘constructed’ for the event. In describing the single performance of the play, Carol Chillington...
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