Universidad de Valladolid (Valladolid, Spain)

Red Bull Theater’s Sardanapalus & Global Watch Party Review

By Sara Medina Calzada

On the 29th of October, the Faculty of Philosophy and Arts of the University of Valladolid (Spain) hosted a viewing party of Byron’s Sardanapalus. Most of the attendees were students on the Eighteenth and Nineteenth-Century English Literature course (Degree in English Studies), but there were also colleagues from the English Department and other students, as the activity was open to the general public. Before watching the play, the students had learnt about Romantic drama and Sardanapalus’ sources and themes, and afterwards, they discussed aspects of the performance and the portrayal of Sardanapalus character.

The dramatic reading performed at the Red Bull Theatre provided us with an extraordinary opportunity to approach a rarely performed play that we are unlikely to see in our own country. Despite the challenging nature of the text for non-native English speakers, most of whom were only used to more conventional stage productions, the audience was immersed in the story of the last king of Assyria as told by Byron. The main reason for this was the excellent acting of the entire cast —special mention must go to Amir Arison, whose portrayal of Sardanapalus perfectly embodied the comic and tragic undertones of the play. The lack of props, costumes and scenery allowed the focus to be on Byron’s text itself, a text that explores themes that still resonate in our contemporary society like the nature of leadership, the subversion of traditional masculinity or the conflict between duty and desire.