Postmodern Pastiche, Via Euripides

When Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows hit bookshelves last month, critics throughout the English-speaking world wrote tortuous, elliptical reviews in an attempt to evaluate the end of the series without actually giving away any information about the ending itself. It was satisfying or not, it wrapped up loose ends or didn’t, but we can’t back up our opinions or give too many examples of what we mean because we don’t want to ruin the reading experience for you by revealing too much of the plot. Excerpts from the book are of limited use in conveying the pleasures of reading Harry Potter, of course, because nobody has ever accused J.K. Rowling of being a great stylist. The reader gets caught up in the plotting and storytelling and, over the course of seven books, grows attached to the characters. The primary reason to read these books is to find out "what happens."

Fifth century Greek tragedy, of course, worked a bit differently. Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and their largely forgotten colleagues riffed on known tales from history and legend, working and reworking story material that was already familiar to their audience. The question in these plays is never what happens next; instead the audience anticipates how the events will unfold, how artfully the playwright and the actors will render them, and what themes and insights might be brought to light along the way.

Euripides’s Iphigenia plays (Iphigenia at Aulis, Iphigenia in Tauris) are arguably an exception to this. Drawing on emerging complications and seeming contradictions in the Iphigenia story, Euripides constructed a last-minute, off-stage reprieve for Iphigenia: just as she is sacrificed, she is whisked off by the goddess Artemis to become a priestess at Tauris. Somehow Agamemnon and Menelaus’s men have sacrificed and burned an animal in her place.

To anyone who might accuse me of giving away the ending of Charles Mee’s remarkable Iphigenia 2.0 when I point out that Mee’s version ends not with a messenger declaring an offstage miracle but with the limp and bloodied body of Iphigenia carried onto the stage in her father’s arms, I would say again that these plays, these stories, aren’t about plot. I would also say that Euripides’s notorious use of deus ex machina and similar devices is sometimes misunderstood. Apollo’s appearance at the end of Orestes and Artemes’s reported intervention at the end of Iphigenia are not attempts to patch on a happy ending so much as they are assertions that human beings too often prove themselves incapable of digging themselves out of their own messes. War leads to more war, deceit to more deceit. There is no way to untangle and defuse the escalating tensions and resentments that have built up within and between the nations and families involved in the Trojan War without divine intervention.

The long and often brutal series of conflicts that made up the Peloponnesian War seem to have been a major influence on Euripides and his peers, whether they were writing about it directly or through the lens of the legendary Trojan War. These plays have been revived with increasing frequency in recent years as our own senseless wars in some of the same parts of the world have seemed to lend these texts new relevance. The parallels are limited, though, resulting in juxtapositions of startlingly resonant moments with others that are unnervingly alien. These juxtapositions sometimes seem to crack and fragment the plays themselves, as we are witness simultaneously to the follies and failings of our own civilization and those of one long since fallen.

Charles Mee’s work doesn’t try to paste over these cracks and tensions; it thrives on them. Arguably, Mee’s plays, particularly those based on and adapted from Greek tragedy, are actually about the fault lines between the past and the present. Fractured and fragmented, pasted together from a variety of sources, these plays are an embodiment of the idea that history, like art, is a process, that there is no identifiable "original," but there is also no authentic "universal."

Iphigenia 2.0 incorporates text not only from Euripides, but also from a variety of sources ranging from the etiquette guide written by an adolescent George Washington, to a strategy manual by Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, to blogs written by young brides. Between scenes, the passage of time is marked by dances and musical numbers, including a boy-band style sequence performed by actor-soldiers stripped down to their underwear, to the music of LL Cool J.

This playfulness is a welcome counterpoint to the terrible sadness that permeates the material. Still, playing "name that reference" and debating which of the young actors is hottest when flexing are only momentary distractions from what seems to be the central concerns of the play. How can the value of life be calculated and traded? Should leaders be asked to make the same sacrifices they ask of their people? Are women used as sexual and political currency in patriarchal empires? Most centrally: what can we learn, what are we not learning, from the past?

Mee’s plays are surprisingly accessible and entertaining given the postmodern pastiche of their structure and the Big Ideas with which they grapple. They are also complex and ambitious enough to require a strong director and disciplined cast. When Mee writes stage directions like "And, bit by bit,/ the world descends into a big party riot murder war / the home and war fronts combined / dancing and embracing and weeping / and throwing and breaking things," it takes a strong team to successfully realize the explosive, chaotic atmosphere required.

Tina Landau, who has directed a number of Mee premieres in the past, proves once again that she is a good match for this kind of work. She blends politics with story, spectacle with subtlety, and entertainment with introspection. The production is immaculately paced and even choices that I found a little perplexing were executed well enough to win me over.

The cast, made up mostly of Landau veterans, turn in strong performances all around. Like her friend and colleague Anne Bogart, Landau’s work is built around a method called Viewpoints, a highly physical approach to directing and performing that draws attention to the actor as an athletic presence on stage. These actors dance, climb, leap, and glide around the stage in response to rhythms of the text and the music. Both postmodern dramaturgy and viewpoints staging can be tedious in the wrong hands, but this production is a reminder of how much promise they both have when coupled with craft and creativity.

Tom Nelis is particularly strong as Agamemnon, an almost impossibly polished politician (think Mitt Romney) who foresees his own downfall but is unable to escape it. Nelis marries the intense physicality of Viewpoints technique with the elegance and diction of a classically trained actor. Rocco Sisto, as Agamemnon’s brother Menelaus, turns in a more complex and sympathetic performance than might be expected in a role that is sometimes interpreted as villainous.

Seth Numrich’s Achilles is sweet and sexy as a befuddled young man who has been used to lure his girlfriend to her doom. Luisa Krause, in the title role, skillfully navigates the transition from flighty, lovestruck, young ingénue to tragic heroine and misguided patriot.

Kate Mulgrew (of Star Trek Voyager fame) is somewhat less successful as Clytemnestra, handing in a histrionic performance that would work better in a more conventional production. To be fair, though, part of Landau’s vision for this production is clearly that it be a pastiche of theatrical styles in the same way that the text comes from a pastiche of sources.

Neither the text nor the production go out of their way to draw parallels between the Trojan War and our political present. Indeed, some aspects of the story are drawn in stark contrast to our current political culture. As already mentioned, the gods are not a presence in this version of the story. In lieu of Artemis’s anger at Agamemnon, Mee frames Iphigenia’s sacrifice as a demand by the soldiers: If they are going to be asked to die for the upcoming war, their leader should have to make a similar sacrifice. This reads as a barbed reference to certain of our own hawkish officials who vote in favor of war but whose families remain relatively untouched by its consequences.

The most politically resonant moments of the play come in Agamemnon’s opening monologue, which warns that "there are acts / that will set an empire on a course / that will one day / bring it to an end" and that all empires "are brought down finally / not by others / but by themselves."

One of the more cryptic elements of Mee’s play, and of Landau’s production, is an old Greek Man (Angelo Niakas) who helps with scene changes and occasionally speaks to the audience in a language most of them don’t understand. It may be that this man represents a past that is trying to speak to us, to warn us. These lessons from the past, since we have not taken the time to learn the language, are thus rendered little more than an impotent theatrical gesture.

Iphigenia 2.0 by Charles Mee. Directed by Tina Landau. With Jimonn Cole, Will Fowler, J.D. Goldblatt, Chasten Harmon, Jesse Hooker, Emily Kinney, Louisa Krause, Kate Mulgrew, Tom Nelis, Angelo Niakas, Seth Numrich, Rocco Sisto. Set Design by Blythe R. D. Quinlan. Lighting Design by Scott Zielinski. Costume Design by Anita Yavich. Sound Design by Jill BC Duboff.

Through October 7th. Tuesdays at 7pm. Wednesdays through Saturdays at 8pm. Sundays at 3pm. All tickets are $20. Tickets available at www.signaturetheatre.org, by calling 212-244-7529, or at the box office. Signature Theatre Company, 555 West 42nd Street (between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues.)

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