Recent Press
from Benjamin Bagby’s performances of 'Beowulf' at the Edinburgh International Festival (August, 2007)
"…but when Benjamin Bagby speaks it is as if a thousand years have disappeared. I was sceptical about the pleasures of hearing 100 minutes of this ancient epic told in the original Anglo-Saxon with English surtitles. But something odd happens as Bagby begins to speak, chewing on some words as if they are meat or gristle, launching others like mournful songs. Suddenly you are caught up in the hypnotic rhythms of the story.
…this evening is a triumphant demonstration of the power of storytelling and our deep-seated need to share stories.
Part of the evening's power is that it suggests the concerns and characteristics of humans have not changed all that much.
I can't help feeling that the tale would be much better enjoyed around a roaring fire in a pub, but Bagby nonetheless holds you gripped, and his story seems urgently alive."
— Guardian Unlimited (Manchester), August 20, 2007
"Benjamin Bagby is an extraordinary performer who provides an extraordinary evening's entertainment. Glazed in candlelight and accompanied by his six-string harp, he recreates the role of the scop, a mediaeval storyteller who could perform epics of up to six hours long or more for the entertainment of the town. The tale is told in its original guttural and rich sounds, and often Bagby breaks into a hybrid of song and recitation. The harp flutters around its six notes whipping up suspense and lulling pensively around the words, in an altogether entrancing combination. Aside from the feat which Bagby achieves in memorising the archaic rhythms and unfamiliar sounds of the language, he is a captivating storyteller who moulds each word like a carefully carved stone."
— The British Theatre Guide (London), August, 2007
"Yet the truth is that Bagby's performance repays close attention with such a rich series of echoes and resonances that it's impossible, by the end of the evening, to avoid the feeling that this is a vital, if ancient, piece of popular entertainment, rich in everyday wisdom, thrilling acts of violence, sensational narrative power, and the kind of flexible, shifting relationship between words and music associated today with genres such as rap and hip-hop.
… there's no escaping the sense that this great poem is one of the historic cornerstones of our culture, as rich as any of the other great myths in this year's Festival programme in its sense of humankind struggling for survival in a capricious or indifferent universe.
And Bagby's performance is not only a technical tour de force, but a shining labour of love for the great story it tells, and for the original sound of its telling. "
— The Scotsman (Edinburgh), 21 Aug 2007
"…It even took place in a kind of baronial hall, candlelit, and packed the night I was there with more people than I thought there were in the entire British Isles dying to listen to an hour of what is, essentially, foreign poetry.
They were in for a treat. Bagby brings the story of Beowulf’s slaying of the monster, Grendel, vividly alive, sometimes singing, sometimes declaiming, sometimes taking on the character of whoever is speaking. He’s a crack storyteller.
…a magical evening where poetry’s musicality resounds in a way few of us get to hear now."
— The Sunday Times (London), 26 August 2007