A comedy by Donald Cotton with music by ALAN OWEN in this version of the classical myth, Phaethon, as he drives the Chariot of the Sun across the upper air. discovers that there is no basis for the traditional description of the universe - it is not supported by an elephant standing upon a tortoise. The whole basis of Olympian orthodoxy is threatened, and Helios is obliged to take immediate action.
Orchestra conducted by the composer
Produced by DOUGLAS CLEVERDON

' PHAETHON' is the concluding play of a trilogy begun in 1959 with Echo and Narcissus, and continued in 1960 with The Salvation of Faust. All three plays are concerned with the problems confronting the enthusiast who becomes a fanatic. In Echo the target was genetics applied to marriage guidance; in Faust it was psychiatry considered as a universal panacea; in Phaethon it is youth's rebellion against convention.
Phaethon is the son of Helios, the elemental Sun-God, and is a devout shepherd with conventional religious beliefs: but he is goaded by Venus into attempting a proof of his own divinity. In this he is supported by his doting mother, Clymene, who considers it is high time the new-fangled Olympian deities were taught to respect the dynasty of older gods. Overcoming his father's initial opposition, Phaethon insists on supplanting him at the reins of the sun-chariot, whereupon he is brought face to face with the astronomical realities of heaven. His consequent conversion to materialism threatens to undermine Greek orthodoxy, and he is destroyed by an alarmed combination of gods before he can prove to the world that they don't exist.
DONALD COTTON