Antigone with fish fingers. Oedipus as a corkscrew. And a Greek tragedy that becomes a Greek salad. Every tragedy needs its satyr play. After drama welcome relief is needed. After a hard day watching humans wrestle with the gods of Olympus, what the good people of ancient Greece needed was massive phalluses, the clangour of drums and horns, and actors in ridiculous goatish masks to ease the holy terror they had experienced over a whole day (usually three plays’ worth) of drama. Fast forward two thousand years. When Peter Hall and John Barton brought their nine-hour Trojan War epic Tantalus to The Barbican in 2001, it came with no such final treat. The 12-hour original had been trimmed after its première in Denver the year before, the two titans of classical theatre had roundly fallen out over the changes, and there was no space left for a theatrical joke to lighten the atmosphere.