Plays set in ancient Greece
5 episodes
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A Midsummer Night's Dream
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas behind Shakespeare's comedy with its intertwining plots of royal marriage, crossed lovers, quarreling fairies and rude mechanicals
18 April 2019
Featuring: Helen Hackett, Tom Healy, Alison Findlay
Lysistrata
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aristophanes' outrageous comedy from 411BC in which the women of Athens and Sparta bring their warring husbands to peace by staging a sex strike.
11 April 2024
Featuring: Paul Cartledge, Sarah Miles, James Robson
Oedipus Rex
Melvyn Bragg and guests on Sophocles' tragedy, sometimes called the best play ever written. With Edith Hall, Nick Lowe and Fiona Macintosh.
08 June 2023
Featuring: Nick Lowe, Fiona Macintosh, Edith Hall
The Bacchae
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great tragedy by Euripides, where Dionysus takes revenge on Thebans who denied his divinity, their king torn to shreds by his mother.
18 March 2021
Featuring: Edith Hall, Emily Wilson, Rosie Wyles
The Oresteia
Melvyn Bragg discusses the ‘Oresteia’, the first of the Classical tragedies that come out of fifth century Athens. It is a tale of homecoming, murder, bloody vengeance and the establishment of Law.
29 December 2005
Featuring: Edith Hall, Simon Goldhill, Tom Healy