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by John Barton, directed by Peter Hall

Royal Shakespeare Company, Stage Theater, Helen Bonfils Theater Complex

October 21-December 2, 2000

It may be difficult to believe that after watching 12 1/2 hours of theatre I was left wanting more, but that is exactly the feeling I had after seeing the world première of "Tantalus".  John Barton, who had adapted the known Greek tragedies in 1980 into a cycle called "The Greeks", this time has written an original ten-play cycle based on aspects of the Trojan War not covered in Homer or Greek drama but existing dispersed in numerous ancient sources.  This play cycle would have run 15 hours, viewable over three nights or in two 7 1/2-hour chunks.  Director Sir Peter Hall has adapted Barton's cycle to only nine plays and, subtracting the 90-minute lunch and dinner breaks, it now runs to only 9 1/2 hours.  Not only that, but Hall hired Irish playwright Colin Teevan to supply "additional text", which, according to those involved in the production, includes the entire first play, "Prologue".  Barton's "Epilogue", which had been 76 pages long has been reduced to three.  While one can understand the economic sense in reducing the length of the cycle, the quality of the work is so high, one wishes to have seen the whole work instead of fragments of it.

There should be little wonder that Barton was not present on opening night given that only 57% of a cycle he had worked on for twenty years was being presented.  If he had been there, the ovation for him would have been the loudest and longest since, even from the shards that remain, it is clear that Barton's original work had the vision of a masterpiece.  In dramatizing this alternate "Epic Cycle", as Barton calls it, human beings continue to perceive the world as sets of dualities while each episode of the story forces them to confront situations that transgress these dualities.  The prime opposition is, of course, between the Greeks and Trojans, which Barton has generalized throughout as a conflict between the "West" and the "East".  Barton shows  in Play 1 the source of the war as the Trojan Paris being awarded the Greek Helen by the goddesses, which ought to balance the Greeks' earlier capture of the Trojan Hesione but leads to war.  Achilles, the Greek hero, is half-mortal, half-divine.  Telephus  in Play 2 can only be healed by the weapon that wounded him, but when Achilles heals his victim, we find that Telephus has infected the entire House of Atreus.  Iphigenia in Play 3 shows her love for her father by begging him to sacrifice her.  Neoptolemus in Play 4 must show his manliness as a warrior by disguising himself as a woman. 

Play 5 is literally and thematically central in showing the difficulties of interpretation: Is the Trojan Horse a gift from the gods or a deceit by men?  In the brutality of Play 6 Hecuba tries to convince the captive Trojan woman how to make a victory of enslavement.  In Play 7 the unifying love of Greek Agamemnon and Trojan Cassandra is also their undoing.  In Play 8 we have the literal and metaphorical union of the comic and the tragic in the marriage of the foolish Hermione and the maddened Orestes.  And in the final play concerning Helen, we are confronted by unity of one of the oldest dualities--that of illusion and reality.  If you have not read all the footnotes in Robert Graves' "The Greek Myths", you will be in for some surprising revelations that show the Trojan War in an entirely new light.

Underlying all these plays is the unification of another duality--that of story-teller and audience.  The Prologue begins with a seedy seller of souvenirs (the gods as action figures) telling the background to the story of the Trojan War to a bevy of bathing beauties.  Gradually his words become played out by actors, as in the marriage of Thetis and Peleus (Achilles' parents), while the women merely observe.  Gradually they act less and less like observers and more like a Greek chorus until they formally enter into that role by donning masks.  In the end their role has become so dominant that they destroy the story by rejecting its conclusion.  Barton's intention, as expressed in his programme note, is for the cycle of plays to recapitulate the development of Greek tragedy itself.

Tantalus himself does not appear as a character in the cycle.  We see him rather through the actions, both tragic and comic, of his son Pelops, of his grandsons Agamemnon, Menelaus and Aegisthus, and of their wives, children and opponents.  Tantalus' story is also the underlying story of the cycle.  He brought the nectar of the gods to men and was punished for this by eternal unfullfilment in Hades with receding from his lips and fruit rising away from his grasp.  Tantalus' situation is that of all mankind.  Zeus placed a stone in heaven which could fall at any moment to punish man's hubris.  Throughout the cycle dust from this stone of annihilation shakes periodically onto the stage.  Humans, like the bathing beauties of the Prologue want to know "Who is to blame?  What is the truth of it?  Could it have been otherwise?"  But as the immortal Thetis says, " "True is a word humans have invented to give them a sense of meaning. Immortals do not use it."  What truth humans do have lies in their stories.

"Tantalus", as a co-production of the Denver Center and the RSC, has an Anglo-American cast who underwent an unprecedented 6-month rehearsal period.  The results, in general, are excellent with the principals all assigned to multiple parts.  Those who might fear that half a day of the Trojan war will be dreary are immediately reassured in the Prologue by the richly comic presence of British actor David Ryall as the trinket-seller/story-teller.  He carries this comedy into the part of Peleus, who appears at various points throughout the entire cycle, but his portrayal of the wounded but crafty Telephus is so different one would not know it was played by the same actor.  British actor Alan Dobie also makes a clear distinction between Odysseus and the mostly comic prophet Calchas, although I felt there was far more ambiguity in the character of Odysseus that he brings out.  British actor Greg Hicks is excellent in his primary role as Agamemnon, able to make that character's frequent alternations between serious and comic lines seem completely natural, usually through his mastery of the pause for effect.  However, he brings the same manner of line delivery to the roles of Menelaus (Agamemnon's brother) and, unaccountably, to the Trojan King Priam.  American Robert Petkoff plays all three of his main roles as Achilles, Neoptolemus (Achilles' son) and Orestes with very similar intensity, but then all three are similarly intense characters.

The female principals are universally excellent.  Chief among these is

British actress Ann Jefferies.  She plays the Nurse in the house of Atreus as the one reasonable person there.  She brings incredible power to the role of Trojan queen Hecuba, whom we see descend from the height of majesty and a nobility in defeat finally to a revenge-crazed beast, willing to cut out her tongue and bark so she does not reveal to Odysseus where the hoard of Trojan gold is concealed.  As Aethra, a witness at Helen's trial, she is completely transformed into a kind of Lady Bracknall, readier to spout witticisms that give useful evidence.  All of the other three female principals are American.  Alyssa Bresnahan likewise makes a complete distinction between the alluring sea-nymph Thetis and the understandably neurotic prophetess Cassandra, another Tantalus figure, condemned to foresee the future but not to be believed.  Annalee Jefferies shows great command in her roles from the calculating Clytemnestra, to the enslaved but proud Andromache and to two distinct portrayals of Helen--one the golden illusion, one the veiled reality.  Mia Yoo shows extraordinary range as the tomboy Electra, the transfigured Iphigenia and the comically ditzy Hermione.

As for the rest of the ensemble, it seems that the women of the chorus were cast for how they would look in and out of swimsuits rather than for their acting ability.  As for the men, they have the thankless task literally to be mute spear-carriers and, unlike the women, not to have their faces seen once through the whole cycle.

Given a text so edited down there are various inconsistencies.  The roles of Electra and Aegisthus are built up as much as those of Cassandra or Menelaus, but we never see them after the plays that introduce them.  Achilles' private army of Myrmidons are present through two-thirds of the cycle and are constantly referred to as "ant-men", but we are never told their origin or how Achilles came to to control them.  Telephus poisons the house of Atreus, but we learn much later and only in passing what the outcome was, and, strangely, the cannibalism in that story in never related to that in the Tantalus story.

The design of the cycle has one main difficulty and that is the use of full-face masks.  Peter Hall insisted on them; John Barton was against them.  I side with Barton.  The cycle may be based on ancient sources, but these are new plays not ancient ones so there is no need to recreate any aspect of ancient performance.  Besides that, Greek designer Dionysus Fotopoulos's conception is extremely eclectic--ranging from Agamemnon's neo-samurai look, to Aethra's Edwardian gown, to Hermione's 1920s party dress, to the Myrmidons as leathermen from "The Road Warrior".  Most of all, since the masks are actually moulded to fit the actor's own features, they do not, with few exceptions, fulfill the function of masks, i.e. to distinguish one character type from another.  In this production it is actually the costumes not the masks that distinguish the characters.  In the entire length of the cycle, masks are used for a purpose only twice--when the bathing beauties don them to enter into the story and later when Agamemnon and Cassandra  take off their masks when the fall in love.  Yet even in these two instances, the point is simultaneously made by the presence or absence of costumes, making the whole inconvenience and muffling effect of the masks seem like a director's foible taken too far.

As one might hope, the cycle is filled with spectacle like Thetis's appearances from and disappearances into a pool of water, flames shooting up from the sandy circle of the stage, a huge head of Apollo lying toppled from some ruined statue and, most memorably, the rolling of the Trojan Horse into Troy, so huge only the wheels of it can be glimpsed as it crosses the backstage.  There are, however, also a number of cases where spectacle is used for no clear purpose.  Why does the grown Achilles first appear rising from the dry sand when his mother is a water nymph and he is protected by the river Styx?  Why does Priam, alone among all the characters, walk on stilts?  Why are characters' faces projected sometimes but not others on the walls behind the stage?

The whole cycle is accompanied live by British composer Mick Sands's exciting and evocative music.  The cycle is superbly lit by Japanese lighting designer Sumio Yoshii, who creates a number of amazing effects such as suddenly turning sand to water.  American Donald McKayle's choreography was especially effective for the women's ensemble, but his work for the men often made them look more silly than menacing.

I find it ironic that we have to judge this modern work as if it were an ancient ruin--from the bits that remain, but that is the case here.  This is doubly ironic since Barton's subject is the "bits left out" of other tellings of this tale.  Nevertheless, despite my various complaints, we should be glad that Barton's great work has been brought to the stage at all and in a production which, for all its faults, still communicates sense of Barton's conception.  It's clear why the Trojan War was such an important theme for the Greeks since it ultimately encompasses the full range of possible stories and differing views toward life, human and divine.  Even in this abridged form and imperfect production, "Tantalus" is powerful and thought-provoking.  The plays are rich with memorable lines.  The characters' agonies and pleasures always have modern resonance.  By the end you feel exhilarated by the onslaught of so many insights.  As it is, "Tantalus" is an enriching experience that goes by all too quickly. 

After "Tantalus" leaves Denver, it tours to Manchester, Nottingham, Milton Keynes, Newcastle and Norwich before playing in London at the Barbican May 2-19, 2001.

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in the TheatreWorld (UK) 2000-11-10.

Photo: (top) Robert Petkoff as Achilles with his Myrmidons (Play 1); (upper middle) Greg Hicks as Priam with the women of Troy (Play 5); (lower middle) Robert Petkoff as Neoptolemus and Annalee Jeffries as Andromache (Play 5) .  ©2000 Manuel Harlan.