The Trojan War is ancient history, but the way @Studio_Theatre's "An Iliad" tells it, it could have happened yesterday: http://bit.ly/UrfY3D
5:49 PM - 28 Dec 12 · Details
Scott Parkinson in 'An Iliad.' (Studio Theatre/Theodore Wolff)
If it has been awhile since you read Homer, or if your memories of 2004’s (Brad) Pitt-iable Troy are getting fuzzy, it might be time to get yourself to the Studio Theatre's An Iliad which runs through January 13.
Adapted by Lisa Peterson and the oh-so-great Denis O’Hare (a Tony Winner more recognized for delicious turns in the melodramedies American Horror Story and True Blood), the story has all the key players in it: Agamemnon, Hector (Eric Bana 4-ever!), Paris, Helen.
It’s got all the key events: Wife-stealing. Plagues. Fighting. Death. A "young man with fabulous shoes," aka Hermes (high five on that one, playwrights)
But it’s all told through the eyes of one man—a survivor, saddled with severe post-traumatic stress disorder. As he talks, he pours himself one shot after another.
This re-imagined Iliad asks us all to consider how we would emerge after years of exposure to pure rage and hatred. How would our concepts of peacetime be challenged and shattered when we witness good people turn into monsters?
The set is an unadorned backstage area, barren but for a table, ladders, prop bins and some hanging ropes and pipes and lightbulbs, all of which the man tasked with this solitary acting feat, the remarkable Scott Parkinson, uses once and then clears away, stripping the stage in the same manner that war stripped former idyllic-suburb-sounding Troy.
He enters from outside on the street, hurling open the backstage door and lugging a suitcase laden down as much by its contents as the weight of the past. It could be the start of a great film noir.
At first, he seems uncertain how to begin, when faced with us, an audience that for the most part has probably never witnessed anything resembling a wartime atrocity.
“It was hot, how about that?” he offers.
This is the first of multiple attempts by O’Hare and Peterson to directly connect these battles that were waged thousands of years ago into the understanding of a contemporary, overprivileged American mindset.
Sometimes the updated, conversational style can feel a little too forced - like, “I’m gonna make this so relatable, just you watch me!” But that’s rare. For the most part, it’s extremely effective rhetorical strategy.
Like when the Storyteller muses on how “humiliating” it would be to return from battle after nine years, never having gotten what you came for, comparing it to people’s impulse to stay put after waiting in a grocery store line for 20 minutes, even when another line opens up.
After all, you can’t just change lines now—you will have wasted your time.
One of the funniest asides is when the Storyteller imagines what Achilles and Hector’s conversation might be like if they just gave up this bloody fighting business and hashed things out at the nearest Trojan corner pub. Instead, precious lives are wasted.
About half an hour in, the musician Rebecca Landell joins Parkinson on stage, setting the mood and tempo with fierce vibrations from her cello
It’s a scarily unselfconscious performance by Parkinson, whose face already has the gaunt and weathered look of someone who has seen things you don’t ever want to know about. Staring directly into the audience while he talks, his eyes puncture.
A testament to David Muse's direction is how the scenes fluctuate seamlessly between removed reflection and heated action.
In a climactic, ultimate clash between our two main protagonists, sweat and spit spraying, throat gasping, body heaving (again, all this from just one actor), the violence becomes sensual. But then the lights come up and suddenly our Storyteller is standing very still, shocked with self-consciousness, eyes tender with moisture.
“I’m sorry,” he says, quivering. “This is why I don’t normally like to do this.”
The Iliad only covers a fragment of the endless Trojan War. As The Storyteller informs us, he’s not even going to touch on that terrible trick with that horse, or the burning of a whole city.
There’s a certain moment in which the exposition simply stops and Parkinson begins to name, by rote memorization, every violent conflict that has shaped the western world: Crusade after crusade. Cromwell conquest after Cromwell conquest. On and on for about 10 minutes.
Without even being aware of it, you begin to listen for certain “landmarks.” And there they are, interspersed among others: The American Civil War, World War I, World War II, Vietnam. But then he keeps going, slowing to a raspy whisper, as if his voice may just give way if he has to name one more damn warzone.
In the last seconds of this devastating recitation, he’s just naming regions: Iraq, Gaza, Chechnya, Rwanda.
The song that sprang to mind was Bob Dylan's story about a brutal, senseless murder, "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll," and his repeated refrain, “Take the rag away from your face, now ain’t the time for your tears.”
The Trojan War may be ancient history by now, and the names of the Gods may have changed, but the way Peterson, O'Hare and Parkinson retell Homer, it could have happened yesterday.
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