There’s a one woman show about to open at the Malthouse in Melbourne about the iconic Greek poetess Sappho, both written and starring Jane Montgomery Griffiths.

“Sappho like Socrates, would have had a coterie of students and although there may have been an erotic relationship existing between them. It was more seen as an healthy and practical mentor relationship to teach young women how to be good Athenians.”
– Jane Montgomery Griffths – playwright and actor

This will not be its first season, and by all accounts, looking at the previous glowing reviews, this remounting should be a great success.

Sappho herself has also been holding her own since the 7th Century BC, despite the fact we know little about her and only have a scant collection, mostly fragments, of her actual work. What we do have in gargantuan portions is the cultural ephemera that has sprung out of the cult of Sappho.

As the poet Rilke once commented on Rodin, “Fame, after all, is no more than the quintessence of all the misunderstandings collected around a new name.”

The same could be said about Jesus Christ, whose presence in history has never been recorded by any real historians during the time he may or may not have existed. Albeit, ‘The Saviour’ of millions is merely the product of a marketing man’s imagination on the payroll of the early Christian Fathers.

Furthermore this marketing man, whoever he is, wasn’t that imaginative after all, since all he did was create the personality of Christ by rehashing a saviour myth used countless times before.

If the suckers bought it back then, why not use it repeatedly – we’ll just change the font, use a different heading with the same deftness of our famous client when he turned the two loaves and five fish into a feast large enough to feed a 5 star hotel function.

Naturally, but perhaps not fairly, it’s the lesbian angle that makes Sappho such a marketable item. And it’s therefore a natural choice, but perhaps not an imaginative one on my part this was the very issue that kick started the dialogue I had with Montgomery Griffiths.

Thankfully, she is no fool regarding the pitfalls of the cult of the personality. Primarily because she’s a Cambridge graduate, a University lecturer in the Classics and a critically acclaimed actress, not some teenager reworking her image so she can look hotter and more interesting on Facebook.

“For the large part,” she said, “Sappho has of course been manipulated by men over centuries to titillate a male readership. Namely Swinburne and Beaudelaire who painted her as highly sexual and viscious, she appeared to be almost vampiric.

It wasn’t until the 20th Century when two female poets writing under the name of Michael Fields who reclaimed her for a female audience.” But she was not the first woman to claim her, as Montgomery Griffins explained.

“It was Queen Victoria who notably didn’t believe lesbianism could ever be possible drew her own personal etching of Sappho. The problem was her Sappho had a striking resemblance to the queen herself. So for me this perspective is such a default that it’s not really an issue. And when the likes of Penny Wong agrees with Julia Gillard’s anti gay marriage stunts the more gays and lesbians can stand up and say, ‘come on what’s the big deal here?'”

What Montgomery Griffith’s rightly added is that our contemporary, hetro-normative perspective on homosexuality is vastly different to that of the Ancient Greeks. “Sappho like Socrates, would have had a coterie of students and although there may have been an erotic relationship existing between them. It was more seen as an healthy and practical mentor relationship to teach young women how to be good Athenians.”

Above and beyond this obvious middle class sickness with its draconian categorisations of the human condition or for that matter the repressed Queen Victoria hell bent on taming her.

It all comes down to the fact that this Ancient Greek woman’s poetry continues to inspire contemporary artists. The real issue is therefore not so much about arguing if reclaiming the past is a good thing or not.It’s about whether these borrowing artists are good artists themselves regardless of the who, the what and the when of this mythic figure.

If Montgomery Griffiths as a fascinating conversationalist is anything to go by, particularly when she spoke of her collaboration with Marion Potts, the director. And there’s the stunning set design with its use of honey and glass as a ‘materials’ meditation on the art of archiving.

This personally conjured up an image of Sappho encased in a sleeping history chamber ready to be examined by high end TV criminal investigation team.Then this theatrical experience should prove to be not only sensually effective in its delivery, it will also be a visual and viscerally arresting one.

The Malthouse Thatre. July 30th to August 21st. Bookings: www.malthousetheatre.com.au or 0396855111