Don’t let the name fool you – An Iliad bears only a passing resemblance
to Homer’s classic The Iliad, which
you may have struggled through in high school. Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare’s
critically acclaimed one-man stage adaptation ties the ancient with the modern,
by describing the first war to end all wars in colloquial language, but also by
deftly linking the Trojan bloodbath to modern day brutalities. Most likely
you’ll leave the theatre knowing more about The
Iliad than when you came in, but you’ll also know more about humanity than
you ever wanted to.
Peterson and O’Hare’s words find an ardent
messenger in the form of The Poet, played by Joseph Graves. Those who saw him
tack between his six-year-old self, his pastor father, his alcoholic,
tyrannical professor and the man’s tragically handicapped son in his brilliant Revel’s World of Shakespeare should have
little doubt that he can don rags, squat under a makeshift urban bridge, clutch
a bottle of whiskey, and recreate the Western world’s first (recorded) epic
war. Reviews dwell not only on his sonorous voice, but on his gymnastic
movements as he brings each battle to life. But to Graves, this is not about
history but humanity. He explains that Homer’s Iliad made its voice-to-page transition sometime around the 8th
century BC, which means drama – in the sense of performing words from text –
began earlier than Sophocles would have us believe. 'How telling that the
oldest of our Western theatrical forms dealt with the subject of war,' he says, 'of human rage-sponsored confusions, and, of our (often dubious) celebrations
of "victories".' Clearly, little has changed.
Interestingly, the most powerful part of An Iliad reportedly comes not through
dramatic technique but dry recitation of fact, when Graves rattles off a
soul-crushing list of wars that have occurred since the siege of Troy – and
those are the ones we know about. 'It’s not that present-day man is capable of
greater evil than the man of antiquity,' says Graves. 'He merely has more
effective means with which to realise his propensity to evil. Man does not deny
that terrible things have happened, and go on happening, but it is always "the
others" who do them,' he says, adding that when these deeds belong to the
remote or even recent past, they sink into a sea of forgetfulness. 'Then that
state of chronic woolly-mindedness returns, which we describe as "normality".'
For nearly two hours, An Iliad takes us through the trials of Achilles, Patrocles,
Hector, Agamemnon and Priam, but in conversational language, biting commentary
and even evocative songs that drive the point deeper than any annotated
textbook ever could. But crucially, An
Illiad is about The Poet’s message. 'It is the individual that can stop a
war, not a nation.' Words to live by.
