My kingdom for a horse and my horse for another opportunity to sit beneath the stars on a warm, late summer evening to enjoy an ancient Greek or Roman play in the amphitheater at the Getty Villa. This year the New York-based SITI Company, directed by Anne Bogart, presents their adaptation (by Jocelyn Clarke) of “Trojan Women,” that tragedy of tragedies by Euripides, first performed in 415 B.C.
Alone on stage, Poseidon heralds thatTroyhas fallen. Those cunning Greeks have left behind a big wooden horse which the Trojans have wheeled inside the city gates – or in this case the SITI gates – not realizing that it contained a bellyful of Greek soldiers who proceeded to sack the city, sack the women and young girls, so to speak, while dispatching the men and boys to the equivalent of the cotton fields of the Carolinas.
Brent Werzner delivers his monologue crisply and with conviction, but the god of the sea needs to look a little more like Brian Dennehy and to sound like James Earl Jones, don’t you think?
At the center of all this mayhem is Hecuba (Ellen Lauren), Queen of Troy, wife of Priam, mother of Hector, Paris, and Kassandra – all of whom have come or will come to a sorry end. (Achilles, you will recall, drag-raced Hector’s corpse). Bereaved and stunned, Hecuba is now more zombie than first lady, and Lauren makes her misery so palpable that you may even wonder if she doesn’t have a college degree in melodrama.
Her satellites include crazy and prophetic Kassandra (Akiko Aizawa), an odd casting choice – did Hecuba dally with Toshiro Mifune? – in a role that isn’t easy to pull off. Hector’s widow, Andromache (Makela Spielman), nestles their infant son Astyanax to her breast, only to be coerced by Talthybius (Leon Ingulsrud) to surrender him. This scene and its aftermath is perhaps the play’s most moving, and the choreography highly impressive, as each character seems to revolve in his or her own separate and yet interrelated sphere. (I was reminded of the memorable appearance of SITI Company actors as background figures in L.A. Opera’s “Nicholas and Alexandra.”)
The other characters are somehow less stifling, beginning with the tall, stately Helen (Katherine Crockett), who conveys a whiff of snootiness, with little pouts where needed. Mostly she just lolls about, basking in her own beauty, but when her husband Menelaus (J. Ed Araiza) appears, she’ll need to plead for her life. Was she abducted, as she claims, or did she willingly seduceParisbefore returning with him toTroy? Menelaus has the air of someone quite sure of himself when he enters, a confidence slowly eroded by doubt and the very presence of his estranged and yet alluring wife. It’s all slyly humorous, and the one who comes off as a bit of a sourpuss is Hecuba.
While Talthybius is something of a generic, universal soldier, just one of billions who have only followed orders as they marched into harm’s way, much more entertaining is Gian-Murray Gianino as Odysseus, who looks rather dapper and delicate, a combination of art dealer, airline pilot, and maybe Haile Selassie as a young man. While Odysseus (or Ulysses) doesn’t actually appear in the Euripidean original, his appearance here is not without its rueful charm, especially since the audience knows that his journey home toIthacawill not be as straightforward as he envisions.
“Trojan Women” has been conscripted to spotlight all manner of armed conflict where one side has prevailed against and enacted terrible punishment against another. The play is also about the transience of all things, even great cities and noble cultures. The lighting turns a weak red towards the end to symbolizeTroyin flames, although a flickering red and orange could have been more effective to drive home the point of annihilation by fire. For although we may be the playthings of the gods, as Odysseus points out, this is what we do, from Carthage to Dresden and Hiroshima, which is to bring down the hammer of our fury on the settlements of others.
Abstract symbolism on stage is always a risk; sometimes there’s nothing more effective, and sometimes we wonder if it’s a bit pretentious. SITI’s production is mostly compelling but not always. Wailing women, as we saw in last year’s “Elektra” in the same amphitheater, can only carry us so far, but the outdoor experience is worthwhile and the performance holds our attention. In that environment, with capable actors, there are few other places one would rather be.
Trojan Women (after Euripides)takes place at 8 p.m. on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday through Oct. 1 at the Getty Villa, 17985 Pacific Coast Hwy, Pacific Palisades. Tickets, $42 general; $38 students, seniors. Prix-fixe dinners are offered at 6:15 p.m. for $55, or $70 with wine pairing (enjoy and savor; they’ll hold your seats). Director Anne Bogart discusses the play on Saturday, Oct. 1, at 2 p.m., in the Getty Villa auditorium. Next year Playwright’s Arena performs Helen, the follow-up by Euripides to Trojan Women. (310) 440-7300 or go to getty.edu. ER
