“An Iliad” Brings The War Home

According to tradition the Iliad — the first epic poem attributed to Homer — was the source of Greek drama, which is the source of all European theater and everything that derives from it. At Long Wharf Theatre through April 14, An Iliad, directed by Whitney White and adapted by Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare from Robert Fagles’ translation of the poem, puts that idea into action on stage.

We watch a poem for one voice become a play with two actors — which was, according to Aristotle, the great innovation of Athenian drama, c. 460 BC, or about two centuries after Homer’s oral poem was first transcribed. It’s a rousing revisiting of theater in the making.

The Poet (Rachel Christopher), dragging her wheelie suitcase, is stranded in an airport. With some misgivings, she begins to recall her main performance piece, a poem about a very famous war. As she warms to the topic, she is joined by The Muse (Zdenko Martin), armed with a guitar, who adds evocative musical coloration to the story. Eventually, a vast drape is drawn aside to reveal stairs of rocky terrain and a collection of musical instruments and devices.

By that point, we’re well into a riveting recreation of what went down at Troy — that is, the decade-long war between the Greeks and the Trojans precipitated by the abduction of Helen, wife of Menelaus of Sparta, by Paris of Troy, and the moving personal dramas among the people on both sides of the conflict. Christopher dons a white wrap to enact the infamous Helen (even using Christopher Marlowe’s famed tagline ​“the face that launched a thousand ships”), and a breastplate and helmet at other points. There are moments of light humor, as Christopher’s Poet is charmingly self-conscious at times; there are also moments of physical confrontation, and throughout a truly impressive retelling.

The story of the Trojan War may be familiar to many, but some of the most famous parts of the story — most notably the giant wooden horse trick and the fall of Troy itself — are not included in the Iliad. The great ancient poem begins toward the end of the war, with a fight over a woman. Briseis is a captured Trojan awarded by the Greek captains to their greatest warrior, Achilles. When the Greek general Agamemnon has to give up his prize — to end a plague — he insists on taking Achilles’ prize instead.

And thus begins one of the greatest hissy fits of all time. Achilles sits out the war until his beloved Patroclus is killed by Hector, champion of the Trojan army; Achilles then becomes his friend’s fierce avenger, killing Hector in turn. There follows the poem’s greatest scene: Hector’s father, King Priam, travels to Achilles’s camp to beg for his son’s corpse. Achilles is moved and concedes, and the poem ends with the Hector’s burial. His death means Troy’s days are numbered.

Peterson and O’Hare follow the trajectory of Homer’s poem, hitting high points like the scene between Hector, his wife Andromache, and infant son Astyanax, or the description of the great shield of Achilles, created by the smithy god Hephaestus at the request of Achilles’ mother, the nymph Thetis. Christopher is wonderful at registering the visual power of scenes we mostly have to imagine.

The poem makes no pretense to appeal to our more peaceable sensitivities, nor to any egalitarianism, between classes or between men and women. The Iliad celebrates a warrior class, where heroism in battle is the main rooting interest for its audience, as well as tales of how the gods — as spectators who often intercede to help their favorites — affect the action. In attempting to give the poem a universal spin, Peterson and O’Hare create an imagined scene of the chat the lethal enemies Hector and Achilles might have had about the day’s battle and a giant bird that came out of nowhere. It’s the play’s weakest moment as it insists upon bathos to undercut unflinching rage.

For Peterson and O’Hare, all wars are the same, and the best way to get across their attitude to war is to give the Poet a contemporary sense of how destructive and pointless warfare is. That makes for an interesting tension between the poem’s manifest intention — to glorify killing and dying in battle — and the play’s intention of questioning our fascination with warfare and the part it plays in the history of all peoples. To that end, as part of the aria of mourning for Hector, the Poet unleashes a litany of every war you’ve heard of and some you might have missed or forgotten. The crescendo of these names provides a dramatic crux to the play. It’s a bookend to the great catalog of the ships toward the beginning of the Iliad—the part of the poem where the name of each contingent that formed the Greek army is named. Here, that catalog, generally regarded as an effort to give enduring fame to everyone who showed up at Troy and even some who didn’t, is treated to an analogy to the way the U.S. Army is comprised of folks from all U.S. states and territories. The idea seems clear. We value the fact that people are willing to serve, to kill and to die, but at the same time, many of us don’t really believe it’s necessary.

Peterson and O’Hare’s script plays with our ambivalence, knowing we like to hear about terrible things even while deploring them. That tendency may be part of the reason the Iliad remains as respected as it is. As a poem, it is still a staggering achievement. As a play — with lines in Homeric Greek, and lines in Fagles’ very American translation, and lines as casual asides — the story comes to vivid life as we see one person, an African American woman, give voice to both the glory and the maddening heartbreak of war.

An Iliad runs at Long Wharf Theatre, 222 Sargent Dr., through April 14. Visit the theater’s website for tickets and more information.