Seize the Fire

After the success of The Riot Act, his version of Sophocles's Antigone, Tom Paulin turned his formidable powers of transformation on Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound. Commissioned by the Open University, Paulin produced a reworking of the myth, deploying a fluent and sinewy diction laced with the vernacular. As drama it is a brilliant object lesson in what is inessential. Plot and character, even action, are secondary to a gripping, inventive and quasi-futuristic treatment of burning contemporary issues – feminism, the corruption of power and authoritarian politics.