Tale of Troy Wallows in Live Tragedy

For all his fame, Euripides is hard to pull off nowadays. Productions of Greek tragedies are almost always modernized to make them adhere to present-day aesthetics since audiences are not used to stylized choruses and lengthy speeches. The Athena Theater Company’s production of The Trojan Women, directed by Roxanna K. Myhrum ’05, was modernized, but perhaps not sufficiently so. Aside from occasional stirring moments, the play has the feel of a string of declamatory speeches.

There is no respite in The Trojan Women. The play, about the fate of the women of Troy after the city has fallen, is brutally honest about the fate of the conquered. Every few minutes a herald comes on stage announcing that one woman is to be raped, another is to become a slave, or a third’s child is to be killed. These announcements are followed by general lamentation on the part of the Trojan women, after which another horrible fate is proclaimed.

It is evident how this can become tiresome, even in the play’s 90 minutes. After the umpteenth horrible occurrence, it becomes hard to care about the latest tragedy, and the shrieking of the women involved can seem like an overreaction when horror has become the norm.

There are a number of bright spots that help to color the play. The production used an amalgam of time periods for its costuming, designed by Khalda A. Ibrahim ’04 and Sylvia W. Houghteling ’06. Particularly effective was the portrayal of the gods as modern businessmen, with Athena (Cydney McQuillan-Grace ’06) carrying a briefcase and Poseidon (David V. Kimel ’05) recording the destruction of the Greeks on the “to-do” list of his personal digital assistant.

As Cassandra, a prophetess who is to be raped by Agamemnon, Tess Mullen ’04 was eerily mad, whirling blindly while brandishing a sword and promising to kill her “husband”. Meneleus, performed by Richard J. Powell ’04, was dressed somewhere between a trailer park inhabitant, Egyptian, and rapper. Helen of Troy, was portrayed by Leah R. Lussier ’07 as a pouty sexpot accustomed to using her wiles to get her way.

The chorus consisted of five women dressed in black mourning robes suggestive of nuns’ habits or burkas. The women bewailed their fates and unobtrusively mimed actions suggested by the dialogue. This employment was fairly successful, although occasionally the wailing drowned out parts of the dialogue. The inaudibility of certain lines, however, was remarkably irrelevant to the effect of the production; the mournful gesturing, particularly on the part of Hecuba, the Queen of Troy (Harvard employee Isabel del Carmen Quintana), expressed at least as much as the somewhat repetitive speeches.

The play’s set, designed by Vaughn Y.T. Tan ’05, was sparse, consisting only of a cutout crumbling wall at the back of the stage, with a gap in the center for entrances and exits. The lighting, done by Sophia Y. Wang ’07, resembled emergency vehicle lights rather than the intended fire in certain scenes. Yet in general it was extremely effective, casting red shadows on the folds in the actors’ clothing and making the women appear to be covered in the blood of their slain friends.

The Athena Theater Company managed a serviceable job with a difficult classic. However, for The Trojan Women to really interest and move a modern audience, the interpretation must do more to enliven the text.

—Crimson arts reviewer Alexandra D. Hoffer can be reached at hoffer@fas.harvard.edu.