Last night, Red Bull Theater produced a staged reading of George Gordon Byron's Romantic tragedy Sardanapalus.
The play remained unperformed during Byron's lifetime, but it premiered in 1834 with William Charles Macready in the title role. Ellen Tree played Myrrha, a Greek slave who inspires the Assyrian emperor to rise to new heights.
At the time, no one in England had any idea what an Assyrian looked like, but excavations of Nineveh in the 1840s meant that ruins began to go on display at the British Museum. When Charles Kean staged a revival of the play in 1853, he could employ designers to meticulously reproduce Nineveh with a new level of historical accuracy never before seen.
Sketches for the sets--which were designed by William Gordon, J. Dayes, and Frederick Lloyds--can be found today in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Gordon painted scenery for the first and second acts of the play, showing an ancient city on the shores of a river. A second set, designed by Dayes, showed a chamber in the Royal Palace. Lloyds' image of the Great Hall of Nimrod shows the final scene of the play before the whole set appeared to burst into flames.
How the designers achieved this effect is a mystery. We do know that four years later the dramatist and theatre manager Dion Boucicault achieved a similar effect in his play The Poor of New York using quick burning "flash torches" which illuminated a large piece of fabric on which flames had been painted. This cloth was kept in constant motion to make the flames appear as realistic as possible.
However it was that set designers managed the feat, it was realistic enough to cause the insurers of the Princess's Theatre where the show was playing to send investigators to verify that the bursts of flames and falling rafters seen on stage did not actually constitute a threat to the building. Sadly, Red Bull did not have the resources to achieve such technical effects for a staged reading.
Still, the reading was quite enjoyable. Amir Arison played Sardanapalus while Shayvawn Webster took on the role of Myrrha. When she recited the monologue in Act III beginning "Now I am alone" (an echo from Act II, scene ii of Hamlet) I was entranced. From that moment on, the play seemed to move quickly from plot point to plot point right up to the grand finale.
This morning, I spoke on a roundtable about the play with noted scholar Michael Gamer and chaired by Omar Miranda. This was a part of the annual Stuart Curran Symposium. Mariam Wassif also delivered a great paper on the play there, noting how Byron's drama presented its protagonist as both an alternative to modernity and a warning about empire.
Sardanapalus has a lot to say to us here in the 21st century. I hope Red Bull will do a full production of it in the future. If they do, you won't want to miss it!