"Iphigenia at Aulis" by the Gardzienice Theatre (at La Mama E.T.C) - Review
First, an observation: you know that you're sitting close to the stage when you can smell the actors' perfume.
The new production of Euripides' Iphigenia at Aulis at La Mama Experimental Theatre company has been put on by the Gardzienice Theatre, which originates in Poland and emphasizes using music and dance to tell the story as much as they use words (which, incidentally, is a common theme in many productions at La Mama E.T.C.). This production was in an effective blend of English, Polish and Greek, which was not as bizzare as it sounds.
It was short, as befitted the story, which, really, doesn't have all that much content. But it was an incredibly intense forty minutes, filled with wild dance, chanting, and smooth transitions between the three languages, sometimes in the middle of a sentence. And, yet, somehow, it was entirely the story that Euripides told.
One thing is for certain; no one in this play was entirely sane. Not aging Agamenon, his white hair wild and with more than a touch of King Lear. Not the Servant, a woman in this production (whose role was changed to fit the themes of the production; more on that in a minute), with her short hair tied in erratic clumps, her voice high and frantic, and her face perpetually crumpled up almost protectively, as though in response to years of service to unjust masters. Not Menelaus, preening, arrogant, self involved and more clearly than ever starting a war for his own honor. And certainly not Iphigenia, with her head lolling sickeningly on her shoulder even while alive, her eyes wide and looking as though they were about to roll back into her head. Achilles and Clytemnestra were perhaps more sane than the rest of the characters, but they were certainly not completely so.
I also tend to think of this play as primarily political (a view brought to extremes by Charles Mee's Iphigenia 2.0), a cautionary tale about the extremes that a leader can go to in wartime. But this production turned that idea on its head, and made the play primarily about sexuality, a concept that worked startlingly well.
To begin with, the Servant is now used casually as a sexual object by both Agamemnon (in the first scene of the play) and Menelaus, neither of them heeding her high pitched complaints. The lack of compassion, the ability to forget that she was even human was highly effective.
But it was Iphigenia's sexuality that I found fascinating and amazingly appropriate in this production. For here, Iphigenia's first entrance was on a ragged wheel chair, between two piles of the boxes that made up the set. She was masturbating, her feet turned in like that of many an awkward teenager, her head thrown back in ecstasy. And that was what amazed me about this Iphigenia; she was a real teenage girl. This was not the idealized child of Theodora Skipitares' Iphigenia; perfectly genuine, flawlessly self sacricing and completely loving. Neither was she the mindless charicature of Iphigenia 2.0; giggling, stupid, and dressing perpetually in pink. No, this really was a real teenage girl. She was still exploring her sexuality, which was at the forefront of her mind, and she was awkward in that way teenage girls are, and yet she had unexpected moments of grace, as teenage girls do.
And I can't highlight enough how rare it is for teenage girls to be portrayed that way. One of the things that infuriated me most about Spring Awakening was that the boys' sexuality was portrayed as raw, primal, uncontrolled, whereas the girls' was cutesy and harmless. "My Junk" made me want to vomit.
But here was an Iphigenia, of all characters, who was real and believable. Her dance duet with Achilles (who was delightfully confident in his sexuality; at his entrance, everyone on stage seemed infused with new energy) was a gorgeous and quite true portrayal of adolescent sexuality, and, I thought, one of the high points of the show, especially as far as the dancing went. And this Iphigenia did not have purely selfless reasons for wanting to be killed; in her mind, it was clearly that this death was the ultimate sexual experience. And she sort of got her wish. Her death was done in a beautiful and sensual way, and, during that whole sequence Achilles (her object of lust) was entirely naked.
I loved Clytmenstra in this, as well. Dignified to a perfect degree and seeming only a little younger than the actor playing Agamemnon, her grief was tangible and heart breaking, and her arguments with Agamemnon were spot on. The entire speech about how he killed her first husband and child was retained, much of it in English that sounded so harsh that it may as well have been Polish or Greek, and one of the most moving moments of the forty minutes came at the end of that, when she laid her head on Agamemnon's shoulder, not in defeat but in some hopeless desire for comfort, which he couldn't even try to seek from her. At the same time, the Servant laid her head on his knee, and the parallels were obvious. Clytemnestra also got the last word (apart from Agamemnon's "This is the end"), a tearful lament in which it was not clear whether Iphigenia's life was actually spared by Artemis or that was merely a fantasy of Clyemnestra's, as, illuminated a circle of golden light, Iphigenia danced in the background.
I actually believed their portrayal of Agamenon and Menelaus' relationship! This has not happened since the 2003 Helen of Troy. True, it wasn't anywhere near what I imagine, but I suspect that it was closer to what the ancient Greeks thought of it as, at least on Menelaus' end, as this Menalaus would have been laughable if he hadn't had so much influence, and I have no doubt that Homer's red haired cuckold was even more a figure of fun in Greek society than cowardly Paris. This Menelaus I could imagine Helen running away from without hesitation or fear of retribution. And, though Agamemnon was not at all intimidating (he really should be), he couldn't really be, not in this production, where the constant chanting was no doubt preying on the ragged edges of his mind.
Which brings me to the character who perhaps fascinated me the most; the Chorus Leader. I only realized that she was the Chorus Leader a little while after Iphigenia's entrance, when she drove Iphigenia on in her gasping ecstasy with whispered chanting. Later, she had a monologue of sorts, moving in and out of Agamemnon's embrace while discussing the morals of the situation, and ending with the statement (in English) "To live, however miserable, is better than to have died gloriously." In the ending, she is the priestess at Iphigenia's death, wearing a black mask over her eyes and carrying a bowl of water. As Agamemnon repeatedly sharpens two knives against one another, she wraps a long pink scarf around Iphigenia's neck and jerks it several times in time to Agamemnon's drawing of his knives against each other, until finally Iphigenia crumbles into a ball and the lights on her go out.
I am of the wholehearted opinion that this Chorus Leader is Cassandra, and I'm afraid I cannot quite defend it. But, one day, I shall put on a production of Agamemnon with this premise.
In any case, that actress' dancing was gorgeous, and her character is the one I would want to play in that production.
The costumes were vaguely Japanese inspired, which didn't matter at all to the play but worked well. The set, as I mentioned earlier, was made up of boxes with different colored cloth over one side, which were piled in different ways throughout the show. Explaining the seating arrangements would be difficult to someone who wasn't familiar with the layout of the La Mama theater, but let it suffice to say that, for most of it, I was less than two feet away from the actors.
The music was beautiful, though not the kind of thing you would listen to casually, and the choreography was utterly gorgeous. My only minor quibble was that, at times, the music was prerecorded, and there was some precorded singing to make the chorus sections sound better, and, at times, the solos also ended up having precorded singing, which could be heard behind the actual singing of the actors.
This production is difficult to describe further, but believe me when I say that I consider it the definitive production of Iphigenia at Aulis, and that it was nearly a perfect peice of theater. It runs through October 21st, and tickets cost twenty dollars. If you have time for a forty minute play and are prepared for the intensity of such a proudction, I would encourage anyone in NYC to go (further information is here). You may, however, wish to read a synopsis of the play first, so that you can recognize the characters.
Coming soon: a comparison of the three productions of Iphigenia at Aulis that I've seen, and how they handle the various characters.
The new production of Euripides' Iphigenia at Aulis at La Mama Experimental Theatre company has been put on by the Gardzienice Theatre, which originates in Poland and emphasizes using music and dance to tell the story as much as they use words (which, incidentally, is a common theme in many productions at La Mama E.T.C.). This production was in an effective blend of English, Polish and Greek, which was not as bizzare as it sounds.
It was short, as befitted the story, which, really, doesn't have all that much content. But it was an incredibly intense forty minutes, filled with wild dance, chanting, and smooth transitions between the three languages, sometimes in the middle of a sentence. And, yet, somehow, it was entirely the story that Euripides told.
One thing is for certain; no one in this play was entirely sane. Not aging Agamenon, his white hair wild and with more than a touch of King Lear. Not the Servant, a woman in this production (whose role was changed to fit the themes of the production; more on that in a minute), with her short hair tied in erratic clumps, her voice high and frantic, and her face perpetually crumpled up almost protectively, as though in response to years of service to unjust masters. Not Menelaus, preening, arrogant, self involved and more clearly than ever starting a war for his own honor. And certainly not Iphigenia, with her head lolling sickeningly on her shoulder even while alive, her eyes wide and looking as though they were about to roll back into her head. Achilles and Clytemnestra were perhaps more sane than the rest of the characters, but they were certainly not completely so.
I also tend to think of this play as primarily political (a view brought to extremes by Charles Mee's Iphigenia 2.0), a cautionary tale about the extremes that a leader can go to in wartime. But this production turned that idea on its head, and made the play primarily about sexuality, a concept that worked startlingly well.
To begin with, the Servant is now used casually as a sexual object by both Agamemnon (in the first scene of the play) and Menelaus, neither of them heeding her high pitched complaints. The lack of compassion, the ability to forget that she was even human was highly effective.
But it was Iphigenia's sexuality that I found fascinating and amazingly appropriate in this production. For here, Iphigenia's first entrance was on a ragged wheel chair, between two piles of the boxes that made up the set. She was masturbating, her feet turned in like that of many an awkward teenager, her head thrown back in ecstasy. And that was what amazed me about this Iphigenia; she was a real teenage girl. This was not the idealized child of Theodora Skipitares' Iphigenia; perfectly genuine, flawlessly self sacricing and completely loving. Neither was she the mindless charicature of Iphigenia 2.0; giggling, stupid, and dressing perpetually in pink. No, this really was a real teenage girl. She was still exploring her sexuality, which was at the forefront of her mind, and she was awkward in that way teenage girls are, and yet she had unexpected moments of grace, as teenage girls do.
And I can't highlight enough how rare it is for teenage girls to be portrayed that way. One of the things that infuriated me most about Spring Awakening was that the boys' sexuality was portrayed as raw, primal, uncontrolled, whereas the girls' was cutesy and harmless. "My Junk" made me want to vomit.
But here was an Iphigenia, of all characters, who was real and believable. Her dance duet with Achilles (who was delightfully confident in his sexuality; at his entrance, everyone on stage seemed infused with new energy) was a gorgeous and quite true portrayal of adolescent sexuality, and, I thought, one of the high points of the show, especially as far as the dancing went. And this Iphigenia did not have purely selfless reasons for wanting to be killed; in her mind, it was clearly that this death was the ultimate sexual experience. And she sort of got her wish. Her death was done in a beautiful and sensual way, and, during that whole sequence Achilles (her object of lust) was entirely naked.
I loved Clytmenstra in this, as well. Dignified to a perfect degree and seeming only a little younger than the actor playing Agamemnon, her grief was tangible and heart breaking, and her arguments with Agamemnon were spot on. The entire speech about how he killed her first husband and child was retained, much of it in English that sounded so harsh that it may as well have been Polish or Greek, and one of the most moving moments of the forty minutes came at the end of that, when she laid her head on Agamemnon's shoulder, not in defeat but in some hopeless desire for comfort, which he couldn't even try to seek from her. At the same time, the Servant laid her head on his knee, and the parallels were obvious. Clytemnestra also got the last word (apart from Agamemnon's "This is the end"), a tearful lament in which it was not clear whether Iphigenia's life was actually spared by Artemis or that was merely a fantasy of Clyemnestra's, as, illuminated a circle of golden light, Iphigenia danced in the background.
I actually believed their portrayal of Agamenon and Menelaus' relationship! This has not happened since the 2003 Helen of Troy. True, it wasn't anywhere near what I imagine, but I suspect that it was closer to what the ancient Greeks thought of it as, at least on Menelaus' end, as this Menalaus would have been laughable if he hadn't had so much influence, and I have no doubt that Homer's red haired cuckold was even more a figure of fun in Greek society than cowardly Paris. This Menelaus I could imagine Helen running away from without hesitation or fear of retribution. And, though Agamemnon was not at all intimidating (he really should be), he couldn't really be, not in this production, where the constant chanting was no doubt preying on the ragged edges of his mind.
Which brings me to the character who perhaps fascinated me the most; the Chorus Leader. I only realized that she was the Chorus Leader a little while after Iphigenia's entrance, when she drove Iphigenia on in her gasping ecstasy with whispered chanting. Later, she had a monologue of sorts, moving in and out of Agamemnon's embrace while discussing the morals of the situation, and ending with the statement (in English) "To live, however miserable, is better than to have died gloriously." In the ending, she is the priestess at Iphigenia's death, wearing a black mask over her eyes and carrying a bowl of water. As Agamemnon repeatedly sharpens two knives against one another, she wraps a long pink scarf around Iphigenia's neck and jerks it several times in time to Agamemnon's drawing of his knives against each other, until finally Iphigenia crumbles into a ball and the lights on her go out.
I am of the wholehearted opinion that this Chorus Leader is Cassandra, and I'm afraid I cannot quite defend it. But, one day, I shall put on a production of Agamemnon with this premise.
In any case, that actress' dancing was gorgeous, and her character is the one I would want to play in that production.
The costumes were vaguely Japanese inspired, which didn't matter at all to the play but worked well. The set, as I mentioned earlier, was made up of boxes with different colored cloth over one side, which were piled in different ways throughout the show. Explaining the seating arrangements would be difficult to someone who wasn't familiar with the layout of the La Mama theater, but let it suffice to say that, for most of it, I was less than two feet away from the actors.
The music was beautiful, though not the kind of thing you would listen to casually, and the choreography was utterly gorgeous. My only minor quibble was that, at times, the music was prerecorded, and there was some precorded singing to make the chorus sections sound better, and, at times, the solos also ended up having precorded singing, which could be heard behind the actual singing of the actors.
This production is difficult to describe further, but believe me when I say that I consider it the definitive production of Iphigenia at Aulis, and that it was nearly a perfect peice of theater. It runs through October 21st, and tickets cost twenty dollars. If you have time for a forty minute play and are prepared for the intensity of such a proudction, I would encourage anyone in NYC to go (further information is here). You may, however, wish to read a synopsis of the play first, so that you can recognize the characters.
Coming soon: a comparison of the three productions of Iphigenia at Aulis that I've seen, and how they handle the various characters.