David Johnston's adaptation of the last play, "The Eumenides," directed by Kevin Lee Newbury, saves the evening. Its Apollo is a fine comic character, a sort of laid-back playboy who tells the mother-killer Orestes, "You worry too much, relax" as three snake-haired Furies rage around him, trying to tear him apart.

How distant is this Apollo from the one in Aeschylus? Not very.

After all, Aeschylus hauled him down to an Athenian court to justify the ways of the Olympians to human judges who had won the right to decide whether the god was right or wrong. After that stunning plunge from divinity, his transformation to Mr. Johnston's lounge lizard is no trip at all. And if his arguments sound specious, look at those he uses in the ancient play; they will seem familiar.

Mr. Newbury's direction keeps the characters moving in a fast, light step like that of a good chorus line, which of course the Eumenides themselves were the first time around, in the fifth century B.C.