Studying the reception of Greek tragedy in the USA is a daunting task. The vast size of the country and the large number of theatres as well as performances put on by educational institutions offer a considerable challenge. This is of course not the first time that the topic has been tackled, but in the past only sections of the American reception of Greek drama have been examined, for instance K. Wetmore's Black Dionysus: Greek Tragedy and African American Theatre (2003), or the contributions by F. and others in Dionysus Since 69 (E. Hall, F. Macintosh & A. Wrigley [edd.] [2004]), or F.’s ‘The Millennium Project: Agamemnon in the United States’ (in F. Macintosh, P. Michelakis, E. Hall & O. Taplin [edd.], Agamemnon in Performance 458 bc to ad 2004 [2005], pp. 307–32).

With the present volume F. confirms her reputation as one of the foremost scholars working on the reception of Greek tragedy. She has expanded the scope of her Sather lectures given in 2007–8. The result is a book dense with factual information and incisive analysis. It is impossible to do justice within a short review to the scope and depth of the research that underlies this fascinating account and analysis of the performance, influence and adaptations of Greek tragedy in the United States from the nineteenth century to the present. F. has succeeded admirably in the formidable task of presenting the huge amount of material in a coherent form. She indicates that she regards her work as only a beginning: ‘My goal is to leave behind a set of questions and projects for future exploration’ (p. xiv).

Because of their overwhelming number, she excluded college and university productions as well as opera and did not devote much attention to translations. The sources she uses are wide-ranging: published and unpublished scripts of adaptations, video-recordings, interviews and reviews of performances. She has attended many productions herself. Her clear judgement, informed by her deep knowledge of the ancient texts and passionate interest in the theatre, results in a text packed with information, but also presenting a historical and aesthetic perspective on the American search for an artistic identity.

In the introduction, subtitled ‘Americanizing Greek Tragedy’, F. argues that because of the fatalism of plays like Oedipus Tyrannus, Greek tragedy was, until the late nineteenth century, seen as running counter to the defining American belief in human ability to refashion the world. With wider access to education, however, knowledge of Greek culture spread and Athenian democracy came to be regarded as a precursor to America's own. Other hurdles that impeded the spread of performances of Greek tragedy, some economic and some rooted in its differences from mainstream American drama, were gradually overcome. A case study of Electra provides an illustration of F.’s methodology in defining what constitutes the ‘Americanizing’ of Greek tragedy. F. discusses different plays which feature Electra, such as O'Neill's famous 1931 Mourning Becomes Electra, performances of Ezra Pound's ‘radical translation’ of Sophocles’ Electra, Yuval Sharon's 2004 The Mourners and Luis Alfaro's Electricidad. She shows how Greek tragedy, earlier seen by American theatre as a vehicle for melodrama, gradually came into its own and was adapted to engage with the psychological exploration of contemporary problems.

Further aspects of the way in which Greek tragedy came to be accepted on the American stage and then became absorbed into the movements for aesthetic innovation in the early twentieth century are scrutinised in Chapter 1, ‘Greek Tragedy Finds an American Audience’. The importance of innovation in American engagement with Greek Tragedy is again evident in Chapter 2, ‘Making Total Theater in America: Choreography and Music’. Consideration is given to the contributions of American dance choreography, music and visual effects in the revitalisation of Greek tragedy on the American stage. F. argues that aesthetic developments in modern dance laid the groundwork for efforts to restore the full range of dimensions that the performance of Greek tragedy had originally had.

The focus in Chapter 3, ‘Democratizing Greek Tragedy’, shifts to wider themes where public and political issues are brought to the fore. F. notes that as far as she could ascertain the only attempts during the nineteenth century to raise social or religious themes by means of Greek tragedy were made by women. She first examines how Sophocles’ Antigone was studied and performed by various groups of actors to reflect female aspirations. Then the intensified political slant of productions of the 1960s and 1970s, such as a reworking of Brecht's Antigone, is investigated as an example of how the unpopularity of the Vietnam War and later protests against environmental threats and patriarchal oppression found expression in the remaking (a term used by F. which to me seems a good alternative to ‘adapting’) of Greek tragedy. She refers, for example, to actors of The Living Theatre playing the Creon role who explicitly imitated Lyndon Johnson and later Richard Nixon. Other tragedies examined which gave rise to political interpretation in the light of contemporary America were the adaptations of Aeschylus’ Persae, Sophocles’ Ajax and Euripides’ Children of Heracles. These provocative responses to the First Gulf War and the war in Iraq, and refugee problems in the modern world, illustrate how new versions of Greek tragedy have become important artistic instruments for highlighting pressing problems in modern society.

Chapters 4 and 5 build on the framework of the preceding chapters in studying aspects of the performances from the late nineteenth century to the present of versions of two of the most popular tragedies on the American stage: Oedipus Tyrannus and Medea. These chapters examine how the reception of these two great figures of Greek tragedy has developed and changed and argue that their stories have predominantly been interpreted to address issues arising from American anxieties about identity. Detailed information on and analysis of these important tragic figures supplement the well-known recent publications such as F. Macintosh's Sophocles. Oedipus Tyrannus (2009) and the considerable number of books on Medea. As with many of the other tragedies, it is noteworthy how in the cases of Oedipus and Medea, productions and adaptations in Britain and on the Continent have shaped some of their receptions in the US. Often American productions have then taken such development further, for instance the depiction of Medea as an ethnic outsider by Grillparzer and Jahnn was expanded to such an extent that F. maintains that ‘this theme defines the central trend in Medea's American reception’ (p. 193).

F. concentrates primarily on two periods which she identifies as those in which the most and the most significant productions of Greek tragedy occurred: the period from 1910 to the Depression and that from 1970 to the present. The epilogue notes that the performance of many other Greek tragedies not discussed in detail confirms the trend that, since the 1960s, Greek tragedy has been refashioned to respond to important problems of the present time. This last chapter also explores the way in which Euripides’ Iphigeneia plays have been adapted to reflect issues in contemporary life.

Six appendices contain information on American professional productions and new versions of Sophocles’ and Euripides’ Electras, Antigone, Persae, Ajax, Prometheus Bound, Oedipus Tyrannus, Medea and Euripides’ Iphigeneias. The volume contains endnotes and references that provide a substantial bibliography for the topic.

This book is highly recommended for any scholar interested in the reception of Greek tragedy in the modern world. It not only contains a treasure house of information on American productions, but also provides a model of how reception should be studied.