Skip ads and navigation
Advertising
Our network sites seattlepi.comHelp

Daylong immersion in ancient Greece is time well spent

Tuesday, October 24, 2000

By JEFFREY ERIC JENKINS
SPECIAL TO THE POST-INTELLIGENCER

DENVER -- Sometimes it takes an epic drama to make an epic drama.

THEATER REVIEW

TANTALUS

PLAYWRIGHT: Adapted by Peter Hall from a 10-play cycle by John Barton

PRODUCER: Presented by the Denver Center Theatre Company in association with the Royal Shakespeare Company

WHERE: Helen Bonfils Theatre, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Denver

WHEN: Through Dec. 2

TICKETS: $240-$280; 800-641-1222.
Six months ago, an international team of theater artists sequestered itself in this Rocky Mountain city to create "Tantalus," an $8 million 10-part drama based on ancient Greek tales of the Trojan War.

Sponsored by the Denver Center Theatre Company and the Royal Shakespeare Company -- where it will move after a brief run in Denver -- acclaimed British director Peter Hall and his collaborators began to shape and adapt a massive, sprawling text by playwright John Barton.

As the process unfolded, author Barton returned to England for "health reasons" (although some say he couldn't bear to witness the whittling of a text that it took two decades to write), a leading actor was fired, one of the three directors departed for a weekend in London never to return and the grumbling of the 27-member cast could be heard half a continent away.

Compared with the violence and devastation of Greek drama, the vicissitudes of the production process were more like high-plains melodrama. But the stories emerging from Denver rehearsals made veteran theater watchers wonder how it would all play out.

The production opened Saturday at the Denver Center's Helen Bonfils Theatre in an all-day marathon. After months of cutting, shaping and staging by Hall and his team, the production is a poignant and often funny journey through the terror and pleasure of the human experience.

The entire 10-hour production is played amid a circle of sand that begins as a contemporary Greek beach sporting a tottering lifeguard chair, a rotting boat and a bevy of sunbathing beauties. As designed by Dionysis Fotopoulos, the circle becomes a sacred arena that transforms easily into a palace, a war camp or a shrine.

Early on, a vendor strolls by hawking icons of the Greek gods. As he shouts, "Apollo! Aphrodite! Zeus!," the vendor invokes the gods while signaling the knowing humor that will be interwoven throughout the performance.

The young women on the beach buy a story from the vendor, known as Poet (British actor David Ryall), and he begins a tale that spins us back to the birth of Helen. The product of the rape of Leda by Zeus in the form of a swan, Helen is first presented by the poet as "The egg that launched a thousand ships." The collaborators tease the audience's knowledge of the ancients by turning the familiar into something strange and amusing.

"Tantalus" provides imagined background and context for the action narrated in the classic works of Homer, Aeschylus and Euripides. The tale follows the tribulations of Agamemnon, Odysseus and Achilles as it exposes their weaknesses.

Except for a section on Hecuba and the Trojan women, which wrenchingly echoes Euripides (not to mention recent history in the former Yugoslavia), Barton and Hall offer new background to the series of godly jokes and human errors that led to the destruction of two ancient cultures. Far from the dusty recesses of many an adaptation of the Greeks, "Tantalus" is as contemporary as it is ancient; as playful as it is painful.

Nine episodes are broken into three parts: "The Outbreak of War," "The War" and "The Homecomings." In the first section, Agamemnon is driven by his wife, Clytemnestra (whom he seized by force ), to make war over the abduction of her sister, Helen, by a Trojan prince.

Throughout "Tantalus," Agamemnon is a man unsettled by his fate. Unwilling to war over a woman -- not to mention the required sacrifice of his daughter -- he finds himself trapped in a situation with only one exit. As the Greeks prepare to sail for Troy, the audience is left with the heartbreaking theatrical image of Iphigenia departing up the theater's aisle swathed in the train of a golden sacrificial garment.

Between each of the three parts, the Denver Center provides a catered meal served "family-style" in a 10,000 square-foot ballroom. The two-meal breaks provide an opportunity for audience members to build a kind of community over the course of the day -- much as the ancient Greeks did in their Dionysian theater festivals. There is an inevitable feeling of connection that comes from sitting with the same 700 or so people for an entire day and taking 15-minute breaks (or 90-minute meal breaks) between each hour-long play.

By the time the day ends at 10:30 p.m., hundreds of audience members have spent more than 12 hours immersed in a timeless tale of humanity's unceasing foolishness and pain.

The international cast of lead actors -- four American, four British -- perform a multitude of roles brilliantly. Dressed in costumes that evoke styles ranging from modern Western fashion to Japanese samurai, the actors wear masks that hauntingly enhance their voices and the delivery of the text.

Each of these lead actors makes indelible impressions on the audience's consciousness, but several stand out.

Greg Hicks is superb as the Hamlet-like Agamemnon, but he also shows admirable range and dexterity as a 10-foot tall Priam and as Agamemnon's brother, Menelaus.

Alyssa Bresnahan's Cassandra is a wild woman who shrieks prophecy in a voice destined never to be believed. Bresnahan and Hicks share a moment of great poetry and delicate eros when they are left alone -- as Cassandra and Agamemnon, slave and master -- to begin the journey back to Greece. Besides her frustrated prophecies, Bresnahan also delivers pointed comments directed at her mother, Hecuba, and father, Priam.

Indeed, the tension-filled relationships between parents and children are often highlighted in Barton and Hall's vision, which is clearly informed by post-Freudian theories about abandonment, competition and inferiority.

Annalee Jeffries' Clytemnestra is a force of nature matched only by Mia Yoo, who plays her tomboy daughter, Electra. Yoo also tickles the funny bone as a depleted Leda after her encounter with Zeus' swan and as Hermione, the klutzy, spoiled rotten daughter of Helen.

Robert Petkoff is fine as several rage-filled characters including Achilles and his son, Neoptolemus. Alan Dobie is a staunch, if Sean Connery-sounding, Odysseus. Ryall shifts easily through his six roles to provide narrative context and frequent humor.

After the heartbreak of part one and the spirit-numbing brutality of part two, the third part of "Tantalus" begins the healing necessary to help its human actors and audience recapture the joy of life's struggles.

After the near-slapstick homecoming of Hermione, the artistic team highlights the humor and pathos in Helen's trial for "war crimes" following the devastation caused by the war for her freedom.

Through the legends of the ancients, we are reminded that the perils we endure are part of learning what it means to be human. When Tantalus tried to share the secrets of the gods with humans, he went too far and was condemned to be forever hungry, thirsty and in fear for his life. Although he never appears in the epic that bears his name, his curse is ours.

Jeffrey Eric Jenkins is a New York-based theater writer for the P-I. He can be reached at 718-789-5553 or by email at Crritic@compuserve.com

OUR AFFILIATES
NWsource KOMO
Pacific Publishing

Seattle Post-Intelligencer
101 Elliott Ave. W.
Seattle, WA 98119
(206) 448-8000

Home Delivery: (206) 464-2121 or (800) 542-0820
seattlepi.com serves about 1.7 million unique visitors
and 30 million page views each month.

Send comments to newmedia@seattlepi.com
Send investigative tips to iteam@seattlepi.com
©1996-2008 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Terms of Use/Privacy Policy

Hearst Newspapers