I went to see the Oracle

@ Delphi, Texas roots in the Oedipus myth, as related by Sophocles, in the Bible-bashing Texas of George W. Bush, with an overlay of Waco-siege perverse unpredictability and a liberal lashing of behavioural psychology. The cast consists of cattle - a comment on the current American administration? - and the imagery derives largely from the experience of the outbreak of Foot and Mouth Disease among cattle in Britain and its terrible consequences just a few years ago. The richness of the layers of reference and of meaning is at times overwhelming. Moreover, this is an experience in which the grave-diggers do not have a scene of their own but pop up, tragicomically at odd moments, to draw a smile, often an ironic, a conspiratorial smile. Shakespeare would have approved.