ClassicsFest afternoon of fun, feasting and excess
Food, film and a play
Bringing the Romans to life with afternoon tea sounds like a collision of cultures, summoning unlikely images of gladiators eating fairy cakes and sandwiches cut in triangles.
But that’s not all that is due to be served at the Tyneside Cinema on the afternoon of Saturday, May 16.
Also on the menu is a screening of a Technicolor film by Federico Fellini, an introductory talk by Dr Kathryn Tempest, lecturer in Roman history, and a new play currently taking shape at Newcastle’s Alphabetti Theatre.
Source of inspiration for all this is a famous – perhaps notorious – work of satirical fiction called Satyricon, an outrageous romp attributed to one Gaius Petronius in the 1st Century AD.
It is said to be the second most fully preserved Roman novel after The Golden Ass by Apuleius, which survives intact and tells of a chap obsessed with magic who in trying to turn himself into a bird instead becomes an ass – a bit like Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
But that’s to digress.
In a rehearsal room at Alphabetti, the actors – Judi Earl, Elijah Young and Steven Stobbs – are taking a break and the eye cannot fail to be drawn to a model of a massive cooked turkey, destined to be a prop in the play.
Actually, though, it’s meant to be something more exotic than a mere turkey, says Hartlepool playwright Kirsten Luckins, and she should know because she made it, revealing herself as adept at making props as plays.
Whereas Fellini based his 1969 film on the whole of Satyricon, giving it the same name and imaginatively filling in bits of the story that were missing, Kirsten focuses in her play on just one chapter, known as Trimalchio’s Dinner Party.
This fits squarely with this year’s ClassicsFest theme, Food and Feasting in Antiquity, although the dinner party in question goes way, way over the top, as you will hear.
Her brief, Kirsten says, was to bring the dinner party chapter into the 21st Century, which she did with sixth formers from across the region who have been studying it as part of a Classics for All outreach programme.
Classics for All is a national charity set up after research revealed that the classics were being taught in only a quarter of state schools compared with 70% of those in the independent sector.
The feeling was that state school pupils were missing out on something valuable, so the charity “aims to raise the aspirations and build the cultural capital of young people from all backgrounds by teaching them about the ancient world”.
Cinzia Hardy was similarly motivated when founding ClassicsFest in 2024, seeing the classics not lifeless like the stones in Hadrian’s Wall but full of excitement and with lessons that can benefit us today.
The sixth formers discussed issues such as conspicuous consumption, the role of influencers and what constitutes good taste – and Kirsten incorporated some of their thoughts into her play.
“The original version of Trimalchio’s Dinner Party is told by a narrator who’s travelling around with his boyfriend or slave and they wangle their way into a really extravagant feast given by Trimalchio,” she explains.
“He’s a freed slave who became extraordinarily wealthy and he has a lot of sycophantic hangers-on and a very organised but materialistic wife who may or may not have been bought at a slave market originally.
“So there’s a lot of wealth but they’re all perceived as having not much taste or education.
“The whole chapter is the narrator re-telling the story of this party and how it lurched from excess to excess, getting more and more ridiculous and obscenely opulent, and with Trimalchio quoting literature but getting it wrong.
“There’s a lot of self-aggrandisement and misappropriation of culture and the behaviour of Trimalchio and his guests to their own slaves and servants, and to the women in the group, becomes increasingly outrageous.
“And the food is just bonkers.” Cue that turkey wotsit!
In Kirsten’s telling, of course, all this is in the here and now. She has recast her narrator, a retired gladiator in the Petronius original, as Randy, a former cage fighter.
Meanwhile Trimalchio, which translated from the Latin apparently means ‘triple king’, here glories in the name Rex Elvis Kingston.
Steven Stobbs plays Randy and Elijah is Kyle, the very close friend, but at various times they mimic the ghastly Rex and his acolytes as they relate to their audience the horrors they have witnessed.
As for Judi Earl, and Cinzia who has a small role as well as directing the play, Kirsten says they “bear the brunt of all the bad behaviour”. You can see how this might strike a chord with a modern audience.
Cinzia says a small glossary may be provided for those attending, not because of Latin words or phrases but because of those deployed by the young people who had input into the drama.
Kirsten was tickled to hear them talk of a ‘lit func’, meaning a really swanky event or lit-up function. ‘McMansion’ also appealed to her, the youngsters’ word for a large but tacky abode.
The sixth formers and their families will get a special showing of Trimalchio’s Dinner Party.
Those attending the public performance at 12.30pm on Saturday, May 16 in the famous old Tyneside Coffee Rooms at the Tyneside Cinema are in for a multifarious treat.
First tea will be served and then Dr Tempest, an engaging speaker who is on secondment from the University of Leicester to be acting director of the Institute of Classical Studies, will set the scene.
Then will come the humour and controlled chaos of Kirsten’s play, which the actors will perform as the audience sits around them at their tables laid for tea.
And after the dust has settled on that, everyone will troop into one of the Tyneside’s viewing rooms to watch Federico Fellini’s vivid cinematic telling of Satyricon.
One critic, writing in the New York Post, said of the film that it was “so beautifully composed and imagined that you would do yourself a disservice if, for any reason, you allowed yourself to miss it”.
ClassicsFest, presented by the Lit & Phil and Newcastle University’s School of History, Classics & Archaeology, runs from May 14 to 16 with a range of different events.
Tickets for all, including Trimalchio’s Dinner Party, can be bought online here.