Theatricality

The contradictoriness and multifacetedness of identity is a constant theme in a play which deals so centrally with ideas of plays, illusion, rôle-playing and theatricality.

However both theatricality and amphitheatricality find their clearest imagistic expression in the disruption of the landscape in which the doomed Orpheus performs his enchanting song to a 'theatre' of birds, animals and trees (11.22 Orphei...