If I was at all distracted during the three intensely focussed performances at Bard's Fisher Center, it was to pinch myself to make sure that I wasn't dreaming. Gregory Thompson's production of Aeschylus' Oresteia seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime experience—a satisfactory production of ancient Greek drama in English. In fact it was more than satisfactory—far ahead of anything else I have seen. In fact if I have to qualify my estimate of its success in any way, it is for purely technical reasons: Mr. Thompson concentrated on the surviving element of of Aeschylus' work, the text, and ignored dance and music almost entirely. On the other hand he was perfectly right in deciding on this solution. Whatever dance and music one might bring in would be either an insufficiently documented reconstruction or a modern recreation in a modern idiom, and Aeschylus' verse is sufficiently rich and complex to make it advisable to concentrate on that alone. Every actor delivered Ted Hughes' lucid, noble, and colorful English with supreme clarity and ease, so that the audience could make close contact with the meaning and beauty of the language, as well as the elegance and expression of the actors' delivery. The power of this brilliant production lay in its honesty and directness.