'Troy: After and Before' blends past and present

The production was born from THR 365: Re:Staging the Greeks, a course offered last spring in which 16 students examined the works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes and traveled to Greece to participate in theater workshops and gain cultural exposure.

It should come as no surprise, then, that academic rigor is apparent throughout the production. Vasen and his students stage two very different productions united by their shared era and, more importantly, by their urgings of caution and introspection. Greed and lust for personal and political power devastate the world of the plays and their characters in a period of just 10 years. That the audience enters these plays in medias res seems vital to Vasen's use of the end as a lens through which we view our past and, perhaps, our identity as Americans facing a world in flux.

The performance as a whole effectively blends these aspects of disparate time. In "Agamemnon," a monstrous, ghostly building wall engulfs the area upstage. The building's constructed facade is covered in layers of graffiti portraying ancient and contemporary war imagery as well as ancient and modern Greek phallic pornography, evoking today's graffiti-plastered Athens. Guest set designer Michael Sims has constructed beautiful, haunting layers of time, which professional costume designer Anya Klepikov expanded on with her assortment of 20th-century costumes, for example by dressing Klytaemnestra in rubber galoshes and an apron and the members of the chorus in dusty, Depression-era clothing, evoking images of a crumpling state.

For "Iphigenia," the second performance of the evening, the wall is removed, and the audience sits on either side of the stage, now empty save a gravel playing area. "Iphigenia" uses minimal staging and classical costuming, making it gritty representation of an Ancient Greek playing space that contrasts with the dreamlike, fluid nature of the first play. Lighting design by guest artist Paul Hackenmueller effectively transports us into this world. Sitting behind the stage, I looked out at the house of the Berlind Theatre, which hugs the stage much like in an amphitheater. Though the set, costumes and lighting functioned differently in "Agamemnon," the visual details were again flawlessly executed. Furthermore, Barron's translation (or, I would argue, adaptation) of "Iphigenia" blends contemporary vernacular with the heightened language of the Greek theater. This mixture highlights the production's explorations of the interplay between the biting realism of contemporary theater and the tradition of Greek heroic fantasy.

This is precisely where the largest issue with the production lies.

The problem with "Troy: After and Before" is not in its ideas but in its execution. The wisdom of overarching ancient themes falls flat when executed by actors who fail to break free from acting methods more conducive to contemporary works. The typical role of the Greek Chorus, for instance, is to guide the audience both by cueing it into specific aspects of the story and by demonstrating the characters' unspeakable inner psyche. The "Agamemnon" Chorus - besides being impossible to hear over the constant crunch-crunch-scraaape of the gravel - simply failed to function as a cohesive group of "old dishonored ones, aged beyond aging," as it describes itself in the play. The Chorus' job is to act in unison to direct the audience - we spend the first 10 minutes of the play with it alone - but the actors instead rationalize their individual behaviors. The telltale sign of their failure in this role was that the audience shuffled nervously in its seats moments into the play.

Because it was so easy to stray from this Chorus, it also became easy to lose any connection to the actors, but there were some strong performances. Especially effective was Sara-Ashley Bischoff '09's rollercoaster of expression as Klytaemnestra in "Iphigenia." Bischoff is also a senior writer for The Daily Princetonian.

The Chorus in "Iphigenia" - unlike that in "Agamemnon" - is a joy to watch, possibly because the play's clear narrative structure made the Chorus' function as a guide simpler. Veronica Siverd '10 also makes several strong choices as Iphigenia, the young girl who is transformed into an ironic emblem of the need to serve the state.

That said, both plays could have provided a more holistic journey for the audience if they had relied on characters functioning as an ensemble rather than on standout individual performers. Because the performance lacked this cohesiveness, it flatlined. For a restaging of the Greeks, strong visual direction does not translate to good overall direction. The director must dictate the actor's place in the world of the play, not just a character's motivations.

The issue contemporary audiences typically have with ancient Greek plays is that they are often long and not rooted in the modes of psychology to which we are accustomed. Therefore, directors frequently turn to contemporary translations and visualizations to make them more approachable. "Troy: After and Before" is a production that appears to carry these same good intentions, but instead of providing solid, cohesive insight, it becomes just another in a long list of re-imagined Greek tragedies that fail to deliver.

Performances continue this Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. in Berlind Theatre.

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