Nov. 17--Would you kill your own daughter as a sacrifice to the gods?
Of course not. Civilization has evolved from the fifth century before Christ -- an Athenian era when those famous experiments in democracy and public morality could easily fall back into barbarity. We've come to view human life as sacrosanct. Or, at least, the human life of our own family members, such love now being widely accepted as trumping all.
The decision by Agamemnon to butcher Iphigenia, merely in service of grabbing a few puffs of friendly wind for stuck Greek ships, seems so remote as to be from some distant planet, let alone era.
But in the hands of that great iconoclast Euripides, a playwright-before-his-time who specialized in the pricking of mythical balloons, the fate of one unfortunate family has echoed down the centuries in his famed Iphigenia plays. The first, "Iphigenia in Aulis," opened Sunday night at the Court Theatre in Chicago under the direction of Charles Newell, using a fresh and cleareyed translation from former Court artistic director Nicholas Rudall. As Euripides understood with singular prescience, Agamemnon's conundrum, and fateful decision, could function as a metaphor.
You might not be willing to indulge in bloody human sacrifice, but you might spend too much time at the office, away from your daughter. You might well sacrifice her needs for your own ends. You don't have to be a Greek king to know that the demands of life, especially a public life, mean choices have to be made, choices at the expense of your family.
And although the writhing of Agamemnon (played by Mark L. Montgomery) occupies a good portion of the 90-minute stage time of "Iphigenia in Aulis," the playwright finds time to present the reaction of one Clytemnestra (Sandra Marquez) to her husband's questionable decision-making. Clytemnestra, you might recall, would extract some revenge.
And then there's Iphigenia herself (she's played by the newcomer Stephanie Andrea Barron), a young woman who has to decide the value of her own life in the face of what is presented to her as the demands of her country. A dated notion? Not so much. There are women today -- fighting Ebola in West Africa, maybe -- who still must weigh such matters.
To put all this another way, the central attempt by Euripides to put his audience in the shoes of these characters still can -- and still should -- feel intensely present-tense and immediate.
The central problem with Newell's new production is that the play's relevancy, intensity and in-the-moment agony is far too muted, overly remote and excessively removed. There certainly is a lot of feeling on the stage, but you're still left with the sense that no one has fully confronted what this play is most obviously about -- now.
The main reason for that, I think, lies with some decisions that Newell and Montgomery, an excellent actor, seem to have cooked up together. Montgomery plays Agamemnon as a distracted man pursued by demons -- a figure constantly trying to bat away the implications of his act. At times, he seems almost to be in a trance.
That's not a wholly unreasonable way to approach the play. If you were presented with such a conundrum, you might well retreat into some alternate state of sanity. But it comes at the cost of the dramatic immediacy of what Agamemnon is choosing to do, which is, surely, what this play is all about, and certainly the key to making it work today.
Of all the Greek writers, Euripides was the one who saw fate as not dictating human actions but flowing from them. What you miss most in this production is a beating human connection that helps you understand that Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, Iphigenia (and the baby boy in his mother and sister's arms) are a family in crisis, a crisis that is unspooling right in front of your face, as the chorus looks on in horror.
Barron is a promising young actress, and she certainly kicks over, as her character should, into full-on martyr mode, heading with determination for the knife. But Euripides was looking askance at Iphigenia's seemingly assured act of selflessness, revealing its hollowness and, in another move that makes this play still so powerful, clearly pointing out that bad parenting can easily be imbued by the kid herself. None of that feels much in play.
Yet those are the sorts of issues that need to dance around your head as you are watching this play. The rest, you could argue, is all window dressing.
Newell's show is by no means a bust. All three of the main actors have resonant moments. The chorus -- composed of such highly experienced actors as Kasey Alfonso, Jeanne T. Arrigo, Emjoy Gavino, Tania Richard, Adrienne Walker and Tracy Walsh, who also choreographs -- has some beautifully sung passages. Christopher Donahue, who plays the Old Man at the start of the play, has gravitas, and there is a real life and accessibility to Jordan Brown's Achilles and Michael Huftile's Menelaus.
Scott Davis' set -- not dissimilar to the setting for Newell's "An Iliad" -- sticks everyone in a very Euripidean environment in the armpit of a tawdry old port. John Culbert's lighting, writ fluorescent in the final moments, makes the point that such an act as that of Agamemnon needs to be judged in the cold light of day. Andre Pluess creates a soundscape of oblivious quotidian activity, of needy Greeks unaware that one family is at the end of its rope.
That naval staple, and a symbol of the immobility of ships, is the dominant image here. All of that works fine. I wish, though, that the rope had better secured all these actors and this director so no one could run from the real heart of the family matter.
cjones5@tribpub.com
Twitter @ChrisJonesTrib
2.5 STARS
When: Through Dec. 7
Where: Court Theatre 5535 S. Ellis Ave.
Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes
Tickets: $46-$65 at 773-753-4472 or courttheatre.org
