Euripides’ Greek Tragedies: A BBC Radio Drama Collection: The Women of Troy, Medea, Alcestis and more

by Euripides, Sian Philips (Narrator), Maxine Peake (Narrator)

A selection of Euripides’ renowned Greek tragedies, adapted for BBC Radio

Acclaimed by Aristotle as ‘the most tragic of the poets’, Euripides was one of the pre-eminent playwrights of 5th century Athens. Included here are seven of his powerful, shocking tales of passion, suffering and revenge that still resonate with us today. Among the star casts are Maxine Peake, Richard Dormer, Roger Allam, Olympia Dukakis, Christine Bottomley, Timothy West, Siân Phillips, Emma Fielding and Anton Lesser.

The Women of Troy – Troy has fallen. The great city is destroyed, its men slaughtered and its women held among them, Hecuba and her daughters... In Linda Marshall Griffith’s contemporary reimagining of Euripides’ compelling anti-war play, journalist Sappho leads a chorus of women as they record and broadcast their testimonies on social media for the world to witness.

Iph... – Colin Teevan’s forceful, vigorous version of Iphigeneia at Aulis sees the Greek leader Agamemnon facing a horrifying choice. With the Greek fleet becalmed at Aulis, should he sacrifice Iphigeneia to the gods for a fair wind to Troy, or save his beloved daughter at the cost of his honour?

Alcestis – When the gods insist that King Admetos must die, his devoted wife Alcestis offers herself in his place and goes to the grave in his stead. Can the hero Heracles rescue her from Death’s clutches?

Hecuba – Having watched the rape and pillage of Troy, the widowed, enslaved Trojan queen learns that her daughter is to be sacrificed to the spirit of Achilles, and her youngest son has been murdered by the man who was meant to protect him. Grief-stricken, she vows to take vengeance… An elegant, fierce rendering by Timberlake Wertenbaker of Euripides’ controversial classic.

Hippolytus – Angered that Theseus’ illegitimate son refuses to worship her, the goddess Aphrodite swears revenge. Using her divine power, she causes Theseus’ wife Phaedra to fall desperately in love with Hippolytus – and condemns them both to death…

The ‘Ion’ of Euripides – Young temple slave Ion has grown up believing himself an orphan. When he meets Queen Kreousa, who was raped by Apollo and forced to give up the resulting child, he discovers his true parentage – but is he destined to die at the hands of his mother?

The Medea of Euripides – Abandoned by her faithless husband, Jason, the vengeful sorceress Medea determines to punish him. Driven by ruthless, cold-blooded rage, she plots to kill his new bride – and murder her own children...

Contains strong language

The Women of Troy

Iph...

Alcestis

Hecuba

Hippolytus

The ‘Ion’ of Euripides

The Medea of Euripides

2026 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd. (P) 2026 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

Audible Audio

Published May 7, 2026

About the author

Euripides (Greek: Ευριπίδης) (ca. 480 BC–406 BC) was a tragedian of classical Athens. Along with Aeschylus and Sophocles, he is one of the three ancient Greek tragedians for whom any plays have survived in full. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him, but the Suda says it was ninety-two at most. Of these, eighteen or nineteen have survived more or less complete (Rhesus is suspect). There are many fragments (some substantial) of most of his other plays. More of his plays have survived intact than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles together, partly because his popularity grew as theirs declined—he became, in the Hellenistic Age, a cornerstone of ancient literary education, along with Homer, Demosthenes, and Menander.
Euripides is identified with theatrical innovations that have profoundly influenced drama down to modern times, especially in the representation of traditional, mythical heroes as ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. This new approach led him to pioneer developments that later writers adapted to comedy, some of which are characteristic of romance. He also became "the most tragic of poets", focusing on the inner lives and motives of his characters in a way previously unknown. He was "the creator of ... that cage which is the theatre of William Shakespeare's Othello, Jean Racine's Phèdre, of Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg," in which "imprisoned men and women destroy each other by the intensity of their loves and hates". But he was also the literary ancestor of comic dramatists as diverse as Menander and George Bernard Shaw.
His contemporaries associated him with Socrates as a leader of a decadent intellectualism. Both were frequently lampooned by comic poets such as Aristophanes. Socrates was eventually put on trial and executed as a corrupting influence. Ancient biographies hold that Euripides chose a voluntary exile in old age, dying in Macedonia, but recent scholarship casts doubt on these sources.

Reviews

[Matthew Lloyd]

Euripides' reputation is a fascinating insight into the way human tastes change - of the three playwrights of fifth-century Athens whose work survives, he won the fewest victories in the Dionysia, coming third of three for the trilogy including Medea. Yet his work endured, with a story going that he become so popular in Sicily that following the disastrous Athenian expedition there in the 410s, war captives were released for sharing quotations from his work. Aristophanes would compare him, if unfavourably, to Aeschylus in the Frogs; and Roman writers down to Ovid and beyond would take his versions of myths as the basis for their own versions. While the select editions of Sophocles and Aeschylus that preserved their plays contained only seven each, Euripides' contained ten - and a further nine plays survived carrying his name survived (Rhesus may have been misattributed); when I studied A Level Classical Civilisation we studied more Euripides; and this BBC collection contains seven performances, to the five in the Sophocles set and only the Oresteia trilogy for Aeschylus. Euripides' on-going popularity is secure.

These adaptations of Euripides cover a wide period of time, the most recent the adaptation of "The Women of Troy" by Linda Marshall Griffith broadcast in 2023. This play is a heavily adapted version of Euripides, using modern conceits such as war reporters, news conferences, and social media posts to make the case for the ongoing relevance of this story of what women suffer in war - and continue to suffer in 2026. Similarly, Colin Teevan's Iph... (broadcast 2001) adapts Iphigenia at Aulis into a play for the radio, showing how the young, especially young women, get embroiled in conflicts against their will - "Lacking choice, I choose to die."

The remaining adaptations are more straightforward versions of Euripides' plays. It also becomes more difficult to track the broadcast dates and translators, unless they are provided in the program. Alcestis offers interesting philosophical conundrums about whether the lives of the young are worth more than the old, how to react when someone sacrifices themselves for you, and what love and hospitality really are, while also giving us a comic Herakles. I found Timberlake Wertenbaker's Hecuba quite difficult to follow, but fascinating. Anton Lesser gives a rather delightfully irritating performance as Hippolytus, in a play that continues to fascinate me for its horrifying elements and utter refusal to make its eponymous hero likeable.

From the titles, it is clear that The 'Ion' of Euripides and The Medea of Euripides are following older conventions about how we refer to Greek plays. Ion is a translation by 'HD' from 1937, including some of her commentary, recorded no earlier than 1954, and feels like a relic in itself, eulogising the perfection of classical Greece and a psychoanalytical interpretation of the gods within it. Medea is a more straightforward adaptation, and is one of the best of the bunch - in Philip Vellacott's 1963 translation, which I studied at A Level. While the original Athenian audience may not have been on board with the actions of its protagonist - and the apparent divine approval of those actions - in the twenty-first century its difficult not to see where Medea is coming from.

I loved experiencing the great variety of style in how Greek tragedy has been adapted for radio over the last sixty years or so. I am sure some listeners will prefer one style or another. Here, you get the variety, and can figure out your own preferences - or if you're just excited for whatever is in store.