War Music

Adapted and directed by Lillian Groag
Based on the book by Christopher Logue
American Conservatory Theater {ACT}
April 1-April 26, 2009
http://www.act-sf.org/

Photo: Kevin Berne.

American Conservatory Theater’s “War Music” is that most fashionable and up to date vehicle, a hybrid. Contemporary poet Christopher Logue’s radical translation of Homer’s ancient war epic “The Iliad,” as brought to the stage by Lillian Groag, is rife with mythical gods and modern props, historic concepts of honor and justice alongside current war references, jump suits and Uzis. Like most hybrids, it runs along pretty well for a while but, somewhere into its three hours of length, it runs out of gas. At the end it simply shudders to a halt.

The time is the final year of the decade-long siege of Troy. Inside the walls of the city are the battle-weary Trojans, outside, the Greeks, similarly exhausted but determined not to go home without the Greek queen Helen, wrongfully (or so they say) abducted by the Trojan prince Paris ten years earlier. Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world (played by the beauteous Rene Augeson), is one of the few females in the show referred to by name. A woman, to these men, is a “she” (plural, “shes”), a chattel, and a thing, one of the spoils of war.

But women and men are not the only players in the game. The gods, the immortals up on Mount Olympus, can’t seem to keep their noses out of the business of humankind. Powerful and quarrelsome in their own right, they choose up sides, Hera and Athena (Sharon Lockwood and Erin Michelle Washingon) on the side of the Greeks and Apollo, the sun god and Zeus, the head Olympian honcho (Jud Williford and Jack Willis) rooting for Troy. Aphrodite, goddess of love (Augeson again) also favors Troy because it is she who set Paris up with Helen in the first place. It sounds more chaotic than it really is because, even with performers doubling and tripling in roles, Beaver Bauer’s golden masks for the gods and vari-colored army uniforms help keep everybody in place. Daniel Ostling’s stunner of a set has two staircases flanking a movable disk behind which all kinds of wonders are revealed.

Yes, there are many wonderful things in “War Music,” beginning with Logue’s poetry which cites “the inbuilt violence of being” as one of the primary causes of war or describes the morning with: “Dawn stepped, barefooted, from her lover’s bed.” The 13 cast members function as an ensemble but the narrators, Charles Dean, Andy Murray and Anthony Fusco are outstanding. Some of the sight gags are hilarious, Poseidon (Fusco), rising from his watery realm, trident in hand and flippers on his feet; a laid-back Zeus, strolling the Olympian heights with a luminescent yo-yo. Other outstanding bits are Hera’s harangue of her husband that segues into a soft-shoe routine and Murray’s bit with a puppet. The battle scenes are imaginatively staged.

But the main story line, as a miffed Achilles (Williford who also plays Paris as a playboy) emerges from a monumental sulk to do battle with the Trojan hero Hector (a dignified Gregory Wallace) – an event that will hasten the war to a close – falls flat in the end. Quite literally. As the golden-haired hero rises in his chariot, wearing magical silver armor, and rushes toward the gates of Troy – and legend – he utters the most banal of clichés and the curtain falls with a thud. The shock is such that one hardly knows whether to applaud or wait for the play to end. After three hours we deserve a little more.

Suzanne Weiss