Homer’s Iliad isn’t just a foundational Hellenic text: it’s the great primal myth of war, sacred and eternal. Its gods and mortals alike are monstrous, heroic and pitiful, endlessly iterative and contemporary. We’ve been treading and retreading this same material for almost 3,000 years, not to exorcise violence but to ritualise and sanctify it. Only the Mahabharata can hold a candle to the Iliad’s immensity and continued intellectual relevance.
While all that cultural weight is enough to make a modern playwright quake, Tom Wright – whose writing for the stage has encompassed the mythologies of Orestes, Medea and Oedipus, to name only a few – is made of sterner stuff. He launches headlong into the colossal tale with the brio and control of the old masters. While the Iliad is the primary text here, Wright also folds in details from Aeschylus, Euripides and Virgil, as well as inventions of his own. The result is shocking, chilling, funny and often breathtakingly beautiful, a grounded piece of epic theatre that fringes the divine.
Troy opens on Dann Barber’s pitch-perfect amphitheatre set as a long stream of sand pours from above – sand in fact is everywhere, strewn as if by time’s scythe, lending the production a hazy, Denis Villeneuve-like quality. The players enter majestically in costumes (again by Barber) that suggest the magnificence of the ancient world, of temples and goddesses via the glamour of Old Hollywood. The ceremonial register is taken up by Geraldine Hakewill, who recites a litany of names and peoples amassing in the shadow of death.
There are countless ways into the story, but Wright seems fixated on Cassandra (Elizabeth Blackmore), the Trojan daughter cursed to see the future but have no one believe her. We initially see her, rejecting Apollo’s (Danny Ball) advances and damning herself in the process. Later, she will try to trick, beg and cajole her family into a comprehension of their fate, utterly without consequence. Far more than a mere prophet of calamity, this Cassandra comes to represent the silent scream of despair as the world crumbles. She’s the most modern of seers.
We are soon introduced to the great Greek warrior Achilles (Ball again), whose love for Patroclus (Lyndon Watts) prevents him from entering the fray, unable to bear the loss of his one great love. This in turn gives the Trojans false hope, believing the cessation of hostilities indicates a desire for peace. When Trojan hero Hector (Mark Leonard Winter) sneaks into the Greek camp and slits Patroclus’s throat, the tsunami of terror is unleashed, the war to end all wars (or start them).
Many key elements of the story are excised or truncated – there is no mention of Priam’s entreaty for the body of his dead son, made so moving in David Malouf’s novel Ransom – while others are altered in fascinating ways. Iphigenia (Ciline Ajobong) is not deceived by her father, Agamemnon (Winter), but rather willingly sacrifices herself to the gods, righteous and fanatical. Helen’s face, the one that launched the thousand ships, remains veiled throughout and the famed Trojan horse is a giant black egg heaving with menace.
Wright’s prose is rich and mercurial, veering from the liturgical to the commonplace with suppleness and ease. Scenes of intense emotional turmoil are undercut with moments of levity and candour, and perspectives move from the antiquated to the contemporary without a hint of smugness or flippancy. Wright’s elevated poeticism can sometimes get in the way of his drama, but here it augments and strengthens it.
Director Ian Michael harnesses all the aesthetic force he can muster. The delicate tonal balance is expertly maintained, with judicious use of anachronism – Cassandra wears a Blondie T-shirt and carries a recycled plastic IGA bag emblazoned with the phrase “I Choose to Re-Use”, in a neat reminder of the regenerative power of myth – and the production thrums with a dangerous vitality. Paul Jackson’s dynamic lighting shifts from sombre to searing as the mood alters, and Rosalind Hall’s sound composition is strange and spooky, simultaneously primordial and mechanistic, recalling Hans Zimmer’s otherworldly soundscapes.
The cast are wonderful, sardonic and sincere in equal measure. Paula Arundell weaponises her sonorous voice, plummeting from sunny optimism to cavernous despair with the drop of an octave. Hakewill is sensuous and commanding as the deadly Clytemnestra, and Blackmore makes Cassandra’s curse seem both hilarious and catastrophic. Ajobong brings a cauterising rage to Iphigenia, and Watts and Ball develop a charged erotic energy in their depiction of pre-history’s seminal gay couple. If Winter feels a little undefined as Hector, he makes up for it with a deliciously lecherous Agamemnon, luxuriating in his Versace budgie smugglers and wading pool.
Troy is a monumental triumph, certainly the best thing Malthouse has produced in years. It translates the forms of epic poetry into something necessary and immediate, effortlessly evoking the current crises in Europe and the Middle East without resorting to literalism or didacticism. Wright’s vision – where the two sides of the battle seem indistinct and interchangeable – echoes French theorist René Girard’s notion of mimetic rivalry, where “the more these characters seek to differentiate themselves, the more they come to resemble each other”. Wright has Patroclus note that the enemies “slept so close together, their nightmares began to mingle.” Cathartic and devastating, this is theatre as war cry and lamentation – unforgettable.
Troy is on at Merlyn theatre, Malthouse until 25 September
