Now this what pure theatre should be like – poignant and evocative, powerful and gripping, involving the audience completely despite the essential artifice of the actor on the stage. A remarkable new take on Homer’s epic poem, An Iliad is a sweeping account of the waste of war and the human propensity for violence, destruction and chaos – all performed by a single actor on a minimalistic set.
Great armies clash on the stage. Spears fly, swords slash through bodies, blood soaks the ground. We see the murderous confusion of battle and the bloodlust it unleashes. Great heroes come face to face in combat. Nations rock and reel under the onslaught. Above it all are the gods, watching the game unfold and moving to help their favourites when peril threatens.
And we share all of that through the words of a single actor, telling stories from The Iliad on a barely decorated stage.
[perfectpullquote align=”left” cite=”” link=”” color=”#430910″ class=”” size=””]“I didn’t want it to be a play …[/perfectpullquote]
The sweep of Homer’s famously sprawling epic poem has been condensed into around 100 minutes. Yet An Iliad manages to span all the themes of the original – warfare, violence, humanity’s attraction to chaos – and to demonstrate a sometimes painful relevance to us today.
This isn’t a kneejerk ‘war is bad’ polemic, though. Of course war is bad, especially when you look at the personal cost as well as the public pain. But things are more complicated than that. War can provide opportunities for bravery and honour, for overcoming fears and doubt, for bringing out the best in us. Both Achilles and Hector, the alpha warriors on both sides of the conflict, are honourable and psychologically complex men. Maybe the bloodlust and that attraction to chaos are an essential part of human nature.
The narrator – described as “the poet”, rather than named as Homer himself, and presented as someone who has (literally) been through the wars – introduces himself as a storyteller. He’s been relaying the tale through the ages and around the known world. He’s a veteran of many wars and many travels, “It’s a good story,” he says, and indeed it is – several good stories, in fact.
And that’s a great starting point for us. An Iliad gives us captivating and engaging accounts of people with real emotions (like Achilles mourning the death of his friend Patroclus) engaged in high-colour dramas (such as the final battle between the Trojan hero Hector and a grief-fuelled Achilles).
The co-authors, Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare, decided early on that the basic structure of An Iliad should be Achilles versus Hector, the heroes who symbolise Greece and Troy respectively. Says O’Hare: “We focused our stories around that central conflict with everything else radiating outward”.
It’s mostly narration, but sometimes the actor does slip into the characters. Not just the big names, but also some of the relatively minor participants – including the women. For instance we see Hector’s devoted wife, Andromache, and the infamous Helen whose kidnapping started the whole war.
A good story, then, and beautifully delivered. It’s also a story for our own times. This version of it starts with the Robert Fagles translation. An unlikely bestseller, his version of The Iliad (published in 1990) succeeds largely because Fagles sought to reinterpret the classic in a contemporary idiom, remaining faithful to the spirit and intent of the original but providing a thoroughly modern narrative energy and verve.
That’s continued in this show; a major strength of An Iliad lies in the way it is adapts the poem rather than simply condensing it. This is a retelling, one that includes contemporary vernacular and largely eschews formal poetry – although there are snatches of verse, and even a few lines in the original Classical Greek, at moments of heightened drama. Most of the time, though, we hear the story in language we know; and that makes it both more accessible and more relevant.
The two people responsible for An Iliad make a strong and impressive team. Lisa Peterson is a nationally renowned director who works in NYC – especially off Broadway – as well at regional theatres around the country. Denis O’Hare is a Tony Award-winning actor with an extensive CV – on and off Broadway, numerous regional productions, film and TV (including the wrath-filled vampire king of Mississippi in HBO’s True Blood and FX’s American Horror Story); he’s also a writer, of play and screenplays. The pair are well into their next project.
The genesis of An Iliad probably lies with the Iraq war. Lisa Peterson says the conflict led her to look for a dramatic reaction sometime around 2004; when she recalled The Iliad as a candidate for a stage performance, the delivery mechanism seemed obvious – “I didn’t want it to be a play, but to be close to recreating the original experience of hearing a storyteller tell you this Trojan War tale.”
[perfectpullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”#430910″ class=”” size=””]“At one point, we even took all the gods out and of course, the whole thing collapsed …[/perfectpullquote]
Peterson contacted Denis O’Hare, a close friend, and over the course of the next five years they honed the idea until they had a script. O’Hare has said that about a third of the text is Fagles’, albeit trimmed and edited in parts. Another third is based on improvs that he did with Lisa Peterson. The rest is original writing “to get us from one place to the next”.
The gods had to stay in, however. “At one point, we even took all the gods out and of course, the whole thing collapsed,” sad O’Hare with a laughs. “The gods in so many ways are the actual machinery of the events that happen. It was a painful editing process …”
“You see” are the last words in An Iliad. That’s an entirely appropriate end to a piece that conjures such vivid images through mere storytelling by a single actor, and which relays a tale of bronze age war that resonates today. We do see – we view what happens in the story, and we understand what that implies for us in our own times.
| An Iliad runs at the Red Theater in the Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi on Saadiyat Island for three performances:
◙ Tuesday 14 March: 8pm Tickets are free, but pre-register here to ensure that you get a seat. There’s a limit of two tickets per person. |
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