Playwright Terence (Publius Terentius Afer) wrote Adelophone (The Brothers) over two thousand years ago, but the theme of his play lives on into today’s world. Demea, father of Aeschinus and Ctesipho, has decided his brother, Micio, should raise Aeschinus, while he would raise Ctesipho himself. Micio is a city-living liberal while Demea is a country-dwelling conservative. They’re both raising their respective sons under their respective views. Micio and Demea feud over which brother raises their son the “best” while the two younger brother’s go through a quarrel themselves over a love they’re both interested in. A happy ending occurs when each of the brothers (all four) realizes they’re being ridiculous.
The play itself gives us a brief overview of the staging, which is quite different compared to Prometheus Bound where no staging was given to us. The stage directions read, “Two houses on a street in a city imagined to be Athens. One, the more opulent, is Micio’s; the other, the more humble, is Sostrata’s. Two entrances on either side, one from the town, and the other from the country.” Typically, in Romance theatre, the stage is set up with the scanae frons having three to five doors. This particular play would have four; two door would be on the ends and then two doors in the center. The two center doors would be that of Micio and Sostrata. The doors on the end would be the town and country doors.
If I were to stage this play, I would do just the same staging. I think I would modernize the costuming though. With Micio and Demea being of different belief backgrounds I would have their costuming reflect their beliefs. For example, democrats are considered more liberal than republicans, so I would have Micio in blue. Republicans are considered more conservative than democrats, so I would have Demea in red.
The ideas behind Terene’s The Brothers can absolutely get displaced into another setting. Who hasn’t seen a romantic comedy about two men or women pining after the same woman or man (Aeschinus and Ctesipho pine after the same woman)? And who hasn’t heard of a grandmother badgering a mother about the way she raises her children? It’s seen in media all the time, especially movies.
Take, for instance, The Parent Trap Lindsey Lohan plays a set of twins who’ve been separated at birth after their parent’s divorce, neither parent telling their child about the other. One day these two children meet and they find that all though they come from the same gene pool and are very near the same person in chromosomes, they have nothing in common and are complete opposites. It’s the way these children were raised that caused them to be so different. One child is brought up in London with the mother a famous wedding dress designer and the other brought up in Napa Valley with the father a wine maker
The Parent Trap is a perfect example that the theme and ideas brought up in The Brothers can indeed be transported into another time.