Boy, I knew for sure the play wasn’t going to be boring when Hecuba (Lauren Pierce) said to Helen (Kaitlyn Soloman), “I hope they pour burning oil through your cunt and rape you with a spear!” That’s not entirely fair — Paris deserves just as much of the blame as Helen does. Although Geisha — who I took — didn’t seem to enjoy the play as much as I did (despite my fidgeting), I’ve got to say it was a lot more exciting and interesting than I’d thought it would be. That afternoon, I’d spoken to my Film & Lit prof, Dr. W, who expressed that she’d wanted to go see the play, but was unable to. I don’t know if she wasn’t able to see it because the tickets were sold out, or because she was busy with last-minute-before-classes-dismiss activities, but I felt obligated to go and enjoy it for her sake.
“Troy Women” is a 1997 adaptation by Karen Hartman of Euripides’ “The Trojan Women.” I haven’t (yet) read “The Trojan Women” (we don’t read it for several more weeks in class), but I thought the play was excellent. The stage was dressed as if the setting was contemporary — a crumbling city block, complete with fence-segments, strewn-wreckage and cinder-blocks. Menelaus (Stefan Subotich), Agamemnon’s herald Talthybius (Andrew Peters) and the rest of the Greek forces could have stepped out of Vietnam with their drab-green uniforms and steel helmets. The play began with a distant-sound of gun-fire. The contemporary imagery against the ancient tale, I thought, worked well to communicate the horrors these Trojan women had survived. The introductory scene — the pissing contest between Poseidon (Gordon Malvern Fair Stick IV) and Athena (Ashtar Talj) can only be described as “spooky”, with perhaps a touch of “scary.” I don’t know I can say enough about Rachael Lee Rash’s inspired (and insane) performance of Cassandra.
Most disturbing? One of the chorus members, a child (well, an adult actress playing a child), who remarks, “Marriage? Is that like what happened last night?” She’d been raped by a Greek soldier. Also scary? Towards the end of the play, she stands on cinder-block steps and jumps off the lowest block, then the next-highest, then the next-highest after that. They were, on the stands, slightly wobbly, and I’m glad that the actress didn’t jump off the fourth highest block, because I think she would have hurt herself if she had.
It’s too bad the play was performed in the smallest theater in Towson’s Fine Arts building. I do think a larger audience may have missed out some of the effect of the small staging (seventy-some seats, bleachers facing each other with the performance between them), but it’s too bad many students in my ItCM course weren’t able to attend (of course, they could have exercised some foresight and preordered a ticket like I did…).
Anyway, so that was my night yesterday. It was a good play — if you’ve ever got a chance to go see it, I highly recommend it (for what small value that might be worth).