Review: 'Rage of Achilles' plays off the 'Iliad'
In Rage of Achilles, Paul Parente has written a fire-breather, full of myth and heroes, battle and bloodshed, cries for justice and the laments that follow. He drew inspiration from Homer's Iliad, setting his two-hour companion piece for Commonwealth Classic Theatre Company within that Trojan War epic.
In Rage of Achilles, Paul Parente has written a fire-breather, full of myth and heroes, battle and bloodshed, cries for justice and the laments that follow. He drew inspiration from Homer's Iliad, setting his two-hour companion piece for Commonwealth Classic Theatre Company within that Trojan War epic.
His protagonists Thano (Charlotte Northeast) and Dmitri (Adam Altman) are spies for the Athenian army, receiving orders from King Agamemnon (John Lopes) and witnessing the cruel deeds of Achilles (Nathan Foley). They initially set a comic tone, cracking wry jokes, as they prove inept at espionage even in the years-long siege of Troy.
Parente's non-metered prose often sparkles like unearthed Homeric gems. A chorus of dead soldiers, "a lighted candle in the wind of oblivion," haunts the stage. Led by the chilling voice of Brian Anthony Wilson, they glide under the slow fades of Dominic Chacon's lighting and Stefan Orn Arnarson's booming sound design. The violence they, and ultimately Thano and Dmitri, enact terrifies in tragic, wanton consequence.
Director Damon Bonetti's production smartly plows through too-long passages of exposition, building toward each exciting battle scene while lingering on the best writing (to which Lopes and Wilson lend gravity).
Moments of tenderness shine through, in Altman's performance and the softness of Anna Zaida Szapiro (as the slave Briseis). And Northeast, disguised to fight alongside men, conveys all the wretchedness and destruction of good brought low by war.
Their performances illuminate Parente's themes of death, revenge, justice, and war's human cost. But the things Achilles lacks - relevance, social criticism of the class, ethnic, or gender sort - make me question why he wrote it now.
Had he lived in ancient Athens, or scribbled alongside Shakespeare, I could easily see a company such as CCTC staging Achilles in their seasons with actual "classics." But to write a play today that comments in the broadest way, in epic style, on themes of universal import? More folly than rage inspired that choice - which says more about us than about any words Parente put on the page.
Rage of Achilles
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Through Aug. 22 at Drexel's URBN Annex Black Box, 3401 Filbert St.
Tickets: $15-$25.
Information: 610-202-7878 or commonwealthclassic
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