Achilles and his heel, Odysseus and his bow, Agamemnon and his bathtub, Oedipus and his Sphinx, Agave and her son's decapitated head, Hamlet and his Ghost, Macbeth and his Witches, Lear and his daughters, Othello and his handkerchif and Estragon and his boot. A boot is suggestive of soldiers, and Beckett's use of the boot in "Waiting for Godot" is a then-fresh reflection of Nazi troops witnessed by Beckett and wife Suzanne walking in Paris streets. Only God knows what made stage director JoAnne Akalaitis think of transferring "'Tis Pity She's a Whore" from early seventeenth-century Italy to mid-twentieth-century Italy during times of il Duce Mussolini! Nowadays, Ms Akalaitis is staging of Euripedes' "The Bacchae" where Agave, besides Euripedes' other heroine Medea, are two of my favourite dramatic characters. My other heroine is Karla Zachanasian whom Ms Akalaitis staged in an opera version of Durrenmatt's "der besuch ulter dame ("The Visit"). Who would forget Meda in the last scene riding her chariot and with her frenzy laughter departs for her father the sun god. Only Pozzo's two exits at ends of two acts of 'Waiting for Godot" could compare to such a spectacular exit. When Agave, drunk to the brim, realises her tragedy of sucking the bones of her slaughtered (by her and her intoxicated wowen-friends) son's head, like an Arab sucking bones of a lamb's head, only Don Quixote, when looking at the mirrors and realising the fool he was, can compare, and Karla Zachanasian taking with her the coffin in which dead Anton lies is a scene with which only King Lear carrying dead body of his daughter Coredlia can compete


Aeschylus and Sophocles are greater poetry writers than Euripedes, but Euripedes is the better theatre writer. Of the three great Greeks, I relish Euripedes most