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Gian-Murray Gianino as Xerxes
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Review by Rodney Punt
Despite the attempts of sane minds to stem the
destructiveness of war, its eons-long sway, arising from human greed or
grievance, seems eternal.
The oldest surviving play in western civilization,
Aeschylus’ The Persians, clocking in
at just shy of 2,500 years, has been trotted out each recent decade as a
cautionary tale against hubris whenever the USA goes to war. It relates the
disastrous campaign by the superior forces of Persia against the seemingly
outnumbered Greeks in the naval battle of Salamis, where the Persian armada was routed at great loss of life.
Aeschylus, who had participated as a combatant in the wars
he wrote about, was both generous and shrewd when he set his version of the story
from the perspective of the defeated Persians, not the triumphant Greeks.
Generous in that the grief and humiliation of an enemy was humanized; shrewd in
that references in the play by Persians to Greek battle prowess come across as
the grudging admiration of a foe, not the jingoistic bragging of a victor.
(The
Greek city-states, by the way, were by no means all on speaking terms with each
other; many were in fact allied with Persia.)
In the 1993 aftermath of the first Gulf War, Peter Sellars
mounted a blaring, glaring, and unsparing production of the play for Edinburgh
and Los Angeles (the latter at the Mark Taper Forum), where the shade of dead King
Darius screamed his regrets over a loudspeaker. Later stagings in the style of
24-hour news-cycles shook up Edinburgh and New York after the 2003 U.S.
invasion of Iraq. This month, as the American response to the rise of ISIS
draws our country into another campaign in Iraq to bomb fanatics into
obedience, the Getty Villa in California’s peaceful Pacific Palisades, hosts the New York-based SITI Company for the latest version of The Persians.
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| The company as the Chorus |
Refreshingly retro under company co-artistic director Anne
Bogart’s direction at its premiere last Wednesday, its stylized choreography,
elegiac tone, and professional elocution emphasized reflection over gimmick,
pathos over bombast, and precision over pretension. Forgoing the attention
grabbing but ultimately ephemeral stage effects of recent outings, this one
left an afterglow of emotive substance to ponder.
It wasn't perfect, but it was mighty good.
With nine transparent orange curtains draped as backdrop between
the columns of the Villa’s northwest façade, the actors emerged one by one from
its entrance door and assumed sculpted positions, sometimes as if they were
statues speaking. The highly disciplined SITI Company’s declamatory speech (in
Aaron Poochigian’s skillful new translation of the play) combined with dance
and music to evoke the feel of ancient ritualistic theater as it delivered its
timely message.
The stage area was the tiled exterior floor space between
the Villa’s wall and the theater’s semi-circular seating. Bogart choreographed
her nine actors in geometric dances -- sometimes individualized, often in
unison imitation -- to achieve drama and action around and within the dialogue.
The quirky movements recalled those associated with primitive Asian peoples who
over the millennia populated vast areas from Asia Minor eastward all the way to North America.
The Chorus of Persian Elders initially attempts to calm Queen Attossa of Persia’s apprehensions of disaster, and throughout the play comments on the eventual disaster’s significance. ("The Greeks serve no king.") The Queen fears for her son, Xerxes, who has led the Persians on the campaign against the Greeks that only the death of her late husband, King Darius, had prevented from his leading.
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| Will Bond (Messenger) & Ellen Lauren (Queen) |
A threadbare Persian messenger (the willowy, bare-chested Will Bond, tied to
an oar for an impossibly long interval) is the first to report the news to the Persian
court. Returning
General Xerxes (an emotionally wounded, nuanced Gian-Murray Gianino) then arrives in brocaded tatters and chronicles to his mother the armada’s disastrous defeat by the wily Greeks. ("Athens has killed our sons.") Having lost his
initial encounter, the rash Xerxes ("popped up with pride," according to his mother, and as history suggests trying to outdo his father) had doubled down his forces in an
attempt to gain victory, but only found further defeat and the near destruction
of all his charges.
The Queen (in a powerful
performance of human distress by Ellen Lauren) wails in her grief at the news ("So much for the odds"),
but engages in damage control at court for fear that Xerxes could lose standing
in the empire. ("The people will be free to speak what they want.") She is hardly consoled by further woeful regrets of her ghostly late husband, Darius
(a sepulchral Stephen Duff Webber), who curses his reckless son and laments the destruction of
all he had built during his lifetime.
The Persians is
not so much drama – there is no real confrontation or conflict – as an extended
ode of lamentation. In its unfolding in this production, the burden of forward momentum
fell on the Chorus, whose songs and dances (the latter sometimes almost
painterly abstractions) energetically interpret the sad revelations. Their
sweep was not always in perfect sync with details of the narrative, but that is
only to quibble with what was throughout always an engaging larger picture.
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| Ring and Chorus around Queen Attossa |
In that regard, the costumes of Nephelie Andonyadis (modern
men’s suits with the ladies in floor length dresses) created a feel of
kindred time zones between the ancient world and today. An arresting flourish was the long gold train behind the Queen's dress, which configured later as an encircling corral of protection. Darron L. West’s sound-design
of percussive noises, rattles, and bells reinforced the action with punch and a feel of timeless profundity.
Composer Victor Zupanc’s minor-mode songs were less successful, seeming
a tad too comfy Elizabethan England for a tragedy set in an exotic ancient Persia.
Xerxes couldn't have known it then, but his hubristic rush to war at Salamis may just have saved what we refer to today as western civilization. Now it's our turn to think twice before we act in wars heading the other way.
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Incidental grouse: While the seating duration on the nicely cushioned cement bleachers was no Greek marathon, it was uncomfortable
without a backrest for an intermission-challenged 90-minutes.
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Photo credits:
1. Gian-Murray Gianino as Xerxes (center) in "Persians" by Aeschylus at the Getty Villa. © 2014 Craig Schwartz.
2. The Chorus in "Persians" by Aeschylus at the Getty
Villa. © 2014 Craig Schwartz.
3. Will Bond as the Messenger in "Persians" by Aeschylus
at the Getty Villa. © 2014 Craig Schwartz.
4. SITI Company cast in "Persians" by Aeschylus at the
Getty Villa. © 2014 Craig Schwartz.
Review of Premiere on Wednesday, September 3, 2014, Getty Villa, Pacifica Palisades, California
4 comments:
"Refreshingly retro" -- perfect!
Thanks, Anna N-M. I like to think that on occasion I too can be refreshingly retro. Or at least retro. Or at least refreshing.
Complete waste of time,
Zero acting, there was only shouting involved with occasional sound of Ah coming out of actors for no reason
Zero use of props, cheapest play I ever saw
Its a show about ancient persia and rome and still nothing representing the era all are wearing suits
no emotions or body language, actors just walking around for no reason
Complete Waste of Time and money. I would have gotten to see 3 normal plays with that much money all which had amazing actors, props and stories
Sorry Anonymous thinks the play had no props or chops, or that an ancient Greek play written as a long elegiac poem needs period costumes and emotional gestures more appropriate for twentieth century Method acting. But, as they say, each to his own.
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