“Every time I sing this song, I hope it’s the last time,” says the Poet (Isaac Lamb) at the start of An Iliad. Over the course of the performance it’s easy to see why. The song is about war and death—shot through with betrayal, anger, and grief—all of it needless. This telling offers no higher reason for the Trojan War: Just pride, rage, and the amusement of inhumane gods.
Written by Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare, An Iliad is a modern retelling of The Iliad, an epic Greek poem about the Trojan War. It’s an immense story of gods and heroes funneled into one speaker, presented on a minimalist stage, and occasionally accompanied by a non-speaking bassist, the Muse (Jeff Kerestes).
This approach suits the source material. The Homeric poems were solo shows to begin with, told to a crowd by a single performer, maybe accompanied by music. And whole stories of gods and heroes grew out of just that—words, an audience, and the right note here and there.
Third Rail Repertory created a very effective, minimalist scene that subtly evokes a war zone. The back of the stage is covered with oriented strand board, a common material for covering broken windows or holes in damaged structures. When the Poet emerges from a doorway of shattered bricks and concrete, it’s like he’s striding through the aftermath of a bombing. It sets the tone for the whole performance: The wages of war are dust and broken things.
The Iliad can be a challenging read. It doesn’t have the fantastic or adventurous elements of The Odyssey, and long stretches of the poem are lists of ships, places the fighters hail from, or individual combatants. Unless you’re a giant nerd for ancient Greece, these names won’t mean much.
We lack context for this inventory, the Poet explains. He invites us to imagine a vast grouping of American warriors from all over. From places like “Pendleton… you know, with the blankets?” Staten Island, Texas, Tennessee, from the mountains, and so on.
And damn if it doesn’t work beautifully. I hated Agamemnon for his arrogance, loved Hector for doing his best to defend his city, and got annoyed at Achilles for being such a cocky bastard. At the conclusion, the fall of Troy felt present, like a series of war crimes being committed right before my eyes. When the Poet mentions the Trojan Horse in passing (which is from The Odyssey, not The Iliad, but the Poet acknowledges it as a post script) it feels like a contemptible betrayal rather than a clever trick.
Lamb is a great match for the source material. His imposing stature and physical presence convey a tragedy he’s dragged around for centuries. The Poet’s identity is never made explicit. He could be Homer. He could be some rank-and-file Greek soldier who saw it all. Lamb makes it easy to believe that the character, once upon a time, put on armor and became part of the slaughter. Or maybe he just heard about it and has been telling the tale in bars. It doesn’t matter. What’s important is that the story lives with him, and he can’t escape it.
At one point, describing a soldier’s rampage through Trojan forces, the Poet becomes lost in the violence. Lamb’s screams filled CoHo Theater, and for a moment things were very uncomfortable in a tense and intentional way. The sight of a man standing on a table and enthusiastically shouting about blood and death is frightening.
Shaking off his reverie, the Poet apologizes for losing himself. He doesn’t want to revel in violence, imagined or actual. He’s tired. He’s been carrying the weight of the world on his immense shoulders, and it’s gotten heavy.
It’s heavy because, thousands of years after Achilles and Agamemnon cruelly sacked the gleaming city of Troy, war just keeps happening. At the start of the play, the Poet makes clear that he’s seen centuries of horrors. He’s witnessed the conquest of Gaul and the siege of Constantinople. He remembers the zealotry of the Crusades and knows the shape of the trenches of World War I. War is horrific. It never does any good. People die needlessly, and it’s never the last time.
“Can you see?” asks the Poet at multiple moments during the performance. He wants us to understand that much of the grief and tragedy that comes from human conflict is avoidable. And he keeps singing the same song, century after century.
Third Rail Repertory Theatre presents An Iliad at the CoHo Theater, 2257 NW Raleigh, showing Wed-Sun, through November 22, $59.50 with w/ other pay tiers available, thirdrailrep.org, all ages ready to hear about war, death, and grief.
