Kate Mulgrew, Louisa Krause and Jesse Hooker in Iphigenia 2.0
(Credit: Carol Rosegg )
To move theater forward, playwright Charles Mee and director Tina Landau take it back to its roots as a democratic tool. In ancient Athens, playwrights used myths to investigate contemporary issues. Plays like “The Oresteia” and “Oedipus” investigated the nature of government, justice, leadership and war. “Iphigenia 2.0” echoes the maturity that you’ll find in those plays, but the tone is utterly contemporary.
Mee and Landau use the idioms of modern-day America to reach their audience. Their project may sound like a conceptual experiment—Mee has added chunks of text to the margins of a copy of Euripides’ “Iphigenia at Aulis”—but that writing process is a means, not an end, just like the use of an ancient Greek myth. Mee and Landau are actually looking at how going to war affects people, whether the enemy is Trojan or Iraqi.
The plot retells the first stage of the Trojan War, which (in this case) involves a belligerent Menelaus whipping the citizens into warlust through fear-mongering and patriotism. To that end, he’s decided that his niece, Iphigenia, should be sacrificed to God. Naturally, her father, Agamemnon, has his doubts—both about the war and the sacrifice.
It’s clear that Mee is grappling with the war in Iraq from a liberal’s conflicted perspective, but he refuses to make any characters (except neo-con Menelaus) into a mouthpiece, and avoids showing anything more than the toll that war takes on parents and the people.
Because of the play’s unique creative process, Mee’s own writing cuts across styles: naturalistic dialogues, patriotic orations, prayers, monologues and a hilarious comic speech about bridesmaid etiquette. There’s an R&B song and a hip-hop dance, a can-can, even an old-fashioned Broadway duet. The effect is like surfing the Web: all linked, despite the lurches from one style to another.
This sense of jumble extends to the visuals. Instead of the sets you’ll find in most shows—a realistic living room, an empty, abstract space—this stage is prefab barracks, with bare concrete, ropes cutting across the stage, ladders and cheesecake photos. The effect is far from a mess; it instead makes the play feel urgent. Much of the credit goes to the large ensemble, and especially the chorus of soldiers (JD Goldblatt, Will Fowler, Jimonn Cole and Jesse Hooker). Their performances hold the show’s center, and they change pace and tone smoothly, as well as perform dances, songs and a climax that explodes in bloody chaos and moving emotion.
This isn’t a show for all tastes. If you’re looking for realism, you’ll probably find the patchwork quality of “Iphigenia” oblique. If you like a solid story, the digressions and musings will frustrate you. And if you’re looking for political drama, you may be disappointed in the symbolism that myth brings with it. But thinking audiences who live in the 21st century and want their theater to do the same will find drama that’s a part of their world, not apart from it.
Iphigenia 2.0 runs through October 15th at the Signature Theatre Company at The Peter Norton Space (555 W. 42nd St., 212-244-7529.) Tickets $20. Complete performance schedule and times.
