Learn all about the ancient cult ahead of 'Bacchae' at the National Theatre

From their origins in ancient Greek and Roman myth to an exciting new staging at the National Theatre, discover more about the Bacchae.

Greek drama is having a moment in London theatre. Following major West End productions of Oedipus and Elektra, Indhu Rubasigham kicks off her exciting inaugural season as the National Theatre’s artistic director with a new take on Euripides’ Bacchae from Nima Taleghani.

Rubasingham has teased that this exhilarating debut play will fill the Olivier space with spoken word and rhyme, “a riot of words, music and movement”, and the rehearsal photographs give a tantalising glimpse of a bold, contemporary reading. But just who are the Bacchae and how have they featured in drama? If it’s all Greek to you, then read on for our handy guide.

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The Bacchae were the original ravers

The Bacchae were the female followers of the ancient Greek god Dionysus – god of, among other things, wine-making, festivity, fertility, religious ecstasy, and theatre. The group were known both as “maenads”, a name that means to rage or rave in Greek, and “Bacchae”, derived from another name for Dionysus, Bacchus, which was later popularised by the ancient Romans.

Whichever term you use for the god, the key thing is that he sent his female followers into a frenzied state, somewhere between pure elation and total madness, via a combination of drinking, dancing, loud music, and extreme ritual. The aim was to achieve such a state of ecstasy that your soul would leave your body and be able to commune with the god, getting a glimpse of what awaited you in the afterlife.

The Bacchae would dress up in animal skins, hold live snakes, and wear ivy-wreath crowns or bull helmets (the god’s symbol). Their rites were primal and violent, such as tearing apart a bull, eating its raw flesh and drinking its blood – a sacrament that would supposedly imbue you with the strength of the god and allow him to possess you.

The Bacchae were considered ‘mad’

The women are characterised as mad and dangerous in several accounts in ancient literature. In Homer’s epic poem the Iliad, they’re described as “mad women”: he writes that the Thracian king Lycurgus banned the cult of Dionysus, and chased the Bacchae “through the holy hills of Nysa” as Lycurgus “struck them down with his ox-goad”.

In another version of the myth, some of the women were unwilling followers who tried to resist Dionysus and were instead driven mad by him, until they carried out the rites in a crazed state – including sacrificing not just animals but one of their own children.

In the Roman version, by epic poets Virgil (in the Georgics) and Ovid (in Metamorphoses), the maenads play a key role in the Orpheus and Eurydice story – which is also headlining London theatre right now in Hadestown. After Orpheus fails to free Eurydice from the Underworld, the Bacchae tear the grieving Orpheus apart, killing him. As punishment they are turned into trees by the gods.

The Bacchae in drama

The most compelling version of the Bacchae myth comes in Euripides’s play, which premiered in 405 BC at the Theatre of Dionysus in Athens, and was regarded as the great writer’s masterpiece.

The play sees Dionysus seeking revenge on the royal house of Cadmus in Thebes. There’s some complicated backstory here: Dionysus is the son of the god Zeus and a mortal woman, Semele (daughter of Cadmus, founder of Thebes). However, Semele’s sisters had accused her of lying and refused to believe Dionysus was the son of Zeus, so he was spurned by them. Semele was killed by Zeus’s thunderbolts after being tricked by the goddess Hera.

A disguised Dionysus arrives in Thebes at the beginning of the play and reveals that he has driven the city’s women mad, including his aunts (Semele’s sisters) Autonoe, Agave and Ino. He leads them into the mountains and the Bacchae perform a passionate ode praising Dionysus.

The young king Pentheus (Cadmus’s grandson) orders that Dionysus be brought in for questioning about these rites. When Dionysus gives cryptic answers, Pentheus has him chained to an angry bull, but Dionysus uses his divine power to destroy the palace with fire and an earthquake. A herdsman then reports on the growing frenzy of the snake-entwined, ritual-crazed Bacchae: they tore his cattle to shreds and plundered a village, stealing babies.

Dionysus tricks Pentheus into disguising himself as one of the cult to spy on them, then reveals him to the women and they kill him. Agave, Pentheus’s mother, arrives back at court carrying her son’s severed head – she thinks it’s a mountain lion. The play ends with Agave and her sisters being exiled by a heartbroken Cadmus, and Dionysus finishing his vengeance mission by turning Cadmus and his wife into snakes.

There are many interpretations of the play’s original meaning, including that it is a critique of absolute religious devotion, or that, through its beautiful if sinister poetry, it shows the lure of a figure like Dionysus, or the transformative power of storytelling and drama itself.

But the play has been staged and reinterpreted in numerous different ways since, either with the Euripides text, or in versions as contrasting as a Joe Orton play at the Royal Court in 1967 which transposes it to a British holiday camp, Wole Soyinka’s 1973 National Theatre production which parallels the action with civil unrest in Nigeria, or Caryl Churchill and David Lan’s 1986 dance-theatre work A Mouthful of Birds, exploring mental illness, gender and sexuality.

What to expect from Bacchae at the National Theatre

Director Indhu Rubasingham has called this new take on the Bacchae an “energetic retelling”. It’s the debut play by actor Nima Taleghani, but since he is well known from his work with Jamie Lloyd, and we know this production features spoken word as well as contemporary movement and music, we could expect something in the vein of Lloyd’s Cyrano or perhaps some of the expressive elements we see in Evita.

It will definitely be a fresh interpretation of Euripides, which is an exciting prospect. The show description suggests it will give the women of the story more agency: “the Bacchae aren’t standing on the sidelines whilst the men have all the fun”. It also says that they “may be a pack, but they’re not animals… they are stage-storming powerhouses ready to cause chaos in Thebes”. That suggests women seizing control in a patriarchal world, which would be a fascinating 2025 reading of the play. But we’ll have to wait and see exactly where this Bacchae goes!

We know it has a terrific cast, led by James McArdle, Clare Perkins, Sharon Small, Fi Silverthorn, and Ukweli Roach. The design is by Robert Jones, the choreography is by hip-hop theatre artist Kate Prince, fight direction is by Kate Waters, and the original score is by DJ Walde. This promises to be an explosive start to the new Rubasingham era.

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Photo credit: Bacchae in rehearsal at the National Theatre (Photos by Marc Brenner)