Greece has been buzzing with excitement following the Euro 2004 victory and before the countdown to this summer's Olympics. When I arrived in Athens on July 1, it looked like the whole city was being given a long overdue clean-up. After strolling around the Acropolis gardens where people were chatting as the heat of the day subsided, and children kicked up the dust playing soccer, the buzz was back at the entrance to the Herodes Atticus Odeon, where Yukio Ninagawa's "Oedipus Rex" by Sophocles (496?-406B.C.) was being staged July 1-3.

For 68-year-old Ninagawa, this was his second major staging in Athens; his first was a now legendary "Medea" in 1984. This time, he had been invited by the Greek government to remount the production of "Oedipus Rex," originally presented in Shibuya, Tokyo in 2002, for its Cultural Olympiad being held prior to the Olympics.

As a gong sounded in the evening air and the Acropolis was bathed in the light of a full moon, it was time to take my place in the semicircular rows of the now roofless Roman Odeon, built in 161A.D., which has been used as a venue for spectacles and entertainments, as well as for theater, since ancient times.