Theatre in Review: An Iliad (New York Theatre Workshop)

The old saw, that all you need for great theatre is an actor and some powerful words, barely even gets lip service nowadays, addicted as we are to hydraulic lifts, flying rigs, and vast LED walls. But the truth of it is brought home with battering-ram force the minute Stephen Spinella walks on stage at New York Theatre Workshop and ushers us into the brutal, blood-drenched world of An Iliad. Billed only as The Poet, he is a kind of modern Homer, consumed and repelled by the terrible story he has to tell. It's the familiar saga of the Trojan War, but, whatever your memories of it are from long-ago classrooms or half-forgotten Hollywood sword-and-sandal epics, be assured that you are ill-prepared for the sheer, spellbinding power of a saga that, in a very contemporary retelling, links the clash of ancient armies with the bloodlettings that, even as you read this, are taking place all around the globe.

An Iliad is well-named, the indefinite article signaling that this isn't Homer's saga in its entirety. (The full story would keep us in our seats for days.) Working from Robert Fagle's translation, Denis O'Hare and Lisa Peterson have focused on the final year of the Trojan War, when the attrition of battle has left both sides exhausted, physically and spiritually. It takes in Achilles' furious, if petulant, withdrawal from the battlefield when he is forced to surrender his beloved slave, Briseis, to the proud and covetous Agamemnon; the doomed attempt by Patroclus to replace his great friend Achilles in battle; and Achilles' revenge against Hector, after Patroclus' death. It's a shrewd strategy, which allows us to experience the war's colossal waste in the destruction of a few key characters.

But then, almost everything in An Iliad is cunningly arranged to deny us even the slightest detachment from these brutal events. The Poet speaks to us in the skeptical, confiding tones of a 21st-century contemporary, drawing parallels that raise disturbing questions about humankind's addiction to violence. In order to make us grasp the breadth of the war's, he asks us to imagine young soldiers from nearly every state in the union; he also makes clear that the war's triggering event -- the kidnapping of Helen by Paris -- is a trivial and pointless affair, barely worthy of mention. And, at the moment of Hector's killing and the subsequent desecration of his body, The Poet recites, in incantatory fashion, a roll call of the armed conflicts that have scarred civilization to the present day. Not for nothing does The Poet, in a moment of candor, whisper, "Every time I sing this song, I hope it's the last time."

No such luck; as blood is returned for blood, the sickening feeling that men don't resort to violence, they glory in it, becomes harder to deny. An Iliad creates a compelling, if unrelentingly bleak, view of human history as a fruitless, self-perpetuating search for justice via the sword. Hearing The Poet detail the sheer madness behind the siege of Troy, you want to believe that it's possible to break the chain that leads from one armed conflict to the next -- even as you realize that history offers little or no hope.

In the current production, Spinella appears in repertory with O'Hare. By all accounts, the latter is mining the text for full harrowing effect; not having seen him, however, I can only say that Spinella's performance, in his most demanding role since Angels in America, is nothing less than monumental. Speaking like a man of today, he draws us in with little jokes and confidences; as the warrior characters, his voice becomes clotted with rage and suspicion. Carried away by descriptions of battle, he seems possessed by the events he describes. And, when he bends over and nearly spits a few words of ancient Greek into the air, each savage consonant carries with it the sound of bones breaking, of flesh torn from limbs. Surely Peterson, who also directed, has helped Spinella to refine his performance to such brilliant effect, but chances are you'll leave the theatre stunned by the power of his work and wondering how he has the stamina to put himself through this experience more than once a week.

In other respects, An Iliad benefits from a production stripped almost bare of conventional effects. Rachel Hauck's setting is an artfully appointed bare stage, and Marina Draghici's costume is evocative of what we imagine must be The Poet's wandering existence. Far more crucial is Scott Zielinski's lighting, from its stark white shafts that create a moody chiaroscuro tableau to the broad stage washes that allow no escape from the horrors of the battlefield. Mark Bennett's score, played live on the bass by Brian Ellingsen, underlines the relentless pace of events.

And, as if instinctively grasping that we can take no more, The Poet refuses to recount the story's famed climax, featuring the faked departure of the Greeks and the horse, filled with soldiers ("that trick," he says contemptuously), that brings the story to its catastrophic end. It doesn't matter; by that point, there is no room for escape from the piece's devastating conclusions. The day that I saw An Iliad was the end of a week in which a trio of US senators urged the president to bomb Syria, Israel stepped up its threats to destroy Iran's nuclear facility, and a US soldier, driven by rage or desperation or the sheer thrill of it all, murdered 16 Afghani citizens, many of them children, and burned their bodies. An Iliad isn't just a classic text brought to horrifyingly vivid life; it's a chilling act of, a revelation of the demons that drive us to this very day.--David Barbour