THE SACK OF TROY, OFF-BROADWAY

The Trojan War was a popular subject of Elizabethan drama. England at the time was mired in a war with Spain; Queen Elizabeth was old and her passing could unleash a civil war, due to factional disputes and the lack of a clear successor. Audiences treated to the rape of Helen and the sack of Troy at the turn of the 17th century could see something of themselves in the story of infidelities, vanities and butchery.

William Shakespeare's “Troilus and Cressida” and Thomas Heywood’s “The Iron Age” are complements from that period. The Bard tells a tale of love and warrior rivalries at the end of the Trojan War, while Heywood chronicles the battles of the war itself, from beginning to end.

These two plays have been elegantly fused together by Brian Kulick, the artistic director of the Classic Stage Company in New York, an off-Broadway company that reinterprets classical repertory. Kulick's adaptation leaves much of the verse intact, though trimmed considerably and with the action reshuffled. (“To defend myself in the aesthetic court of law,” Kulick said in an interview with me, Shakespeare’s plays have always been tinkered with, even in his own day.) At two hours and 45 minutes, the performance demands something of the audience. But much is returned.

The story is a familiar one. Paris, a Trojan prince, seduces and sails away with Sparta’s Queen Helen. The Greeks then head to Troy to conquer the city and bring her back, but after years of fighting nothing is settled. Troilus, Paris's brother, falls in love with Cressida, the daughter of a Trojan priest, but the two are separated when she is traded with the Greeks for a prisoner of war. Meanwhile proud Achilles, a Greek hero, only agrees to take up arms after his friend (and possible lover) is killed. Troy is finally sacked in the end, and almost everyone dies, too.

The story depicts a time in ancient Greece when values were starting to become ambiguous, questionable, pliable. This era became known as the Iron Age, named for a metal prone to rust, to decay. Capturing the essence of the tale and the time, Joyce Carol Oates once called “Troilus and Cressida” a “nihilistic spectacle of man diminished, not exalted.”

There are excellent performances by Achilles, played by Dion Mucciacito (whose Mohawk haircut seems just right), and Ajax, played by Bill Christ–particularly in the second act, when he tries to claim the armour of Achilles, only to be out-argued by the silver-tongued Ulysses, played by Steven Skybell. Steven Rattazzi is a delightful Thersites, the comic fool who speaks the truth.

The result is a fuller narrative than either Shakespeare or Heywood achieve on their own. Moreover, it is a vehicle for examining the paralysis of internal squabbling in the face of external threats, and the sapping of military enthusiasm over time–issues that resonate with today’s audiences. “After ten years battle what have we won / But wounds, time’s loss, shame and confusion,” concludes Ulysses. “If we’ve been too bloody, tis the story / Truth claims excuse and seeks no further glory.”

"The Age of Iron", Classic Stage Company, New York, through December 13th

~ KENNETH CUKIER

Picture credit: T. Charles Erickson