The Lightning Child is a 2013 play by Ché Walker, freely adapting The Bacchae by Euripides.
[1] Its premiere production at Shakespeare's Globe in London ran from 14 September to 12 October 2013 - the same theatre has previously put on Walker's The Frontline.
The play includes songs by Arthur Darvill, who has also collaborated with Walker on The Frontline and the 2009 musical Been So Long.
She describes her meeting with Echion and the conception and birth of Pentheus, before she is turned into a snake by Dionysus in vengeance for her treatment of his mother Semele.
The third examines Caster Semenya and her gender-testing at the 2009 World Championships in Athletics, relating it to Dionysus' ambiguous gender and Pentheus' disguise as a woman.