Homer's Iliad is not the sort of story you expect to find performed on an intimate stage, with no costumes, let alone by a single man. But how can one tell the legend of the Trojan War in modern times, to a modern audience, without multi-million-dollar effects, 10,000 extras, and Brad Pitt? Playwrights Lisa Peterson and Denis O'Hare decided after reading a new translation of Homer's epic poem by Robert Fagles that one man is really all you need.
Legend has it that Homer was a lone bard who carried with him the tale of the war, the stories of Achilles, Agamemnon, Hektor, and Helen, and told it to audiences who might otherwise have forgotten it around Ancient Greece. And it is this idea that forms the center of An Iliad, the Obie-winning production that Peterson directed and is now presenting at Berkeley Rep. It features a lone actor, Henry Woronicz, and it's been done by other actors before him in other cities, including O'Hare himself. But Woronicz does a fantastic, laudatory job of taking on this play, which is as much endurance test as it is proving ground for an aging actors' skill at holding an audience's attention.
The text has been truncated and prodded into something personal and relatable, and Peterson and O'Hare have made every effort to allow this figure of The Poet to make asides to the audience, to discuss ideas of rage, revenge, and war in contemporary terms, and to describe the soldiers who fought in the war as if they were nineteen- and twenty-year-old boys from various locales in the U.S. At one point he even launches into a pained and impressive recitation of the names of every war and major conflict, civil and international, from ancient Sumer to the present, Syria. It takes about three minutes, and it's a powerful moment, and one that exhausts the actor and audience exactly as it should.
A welcome respite from and accompaniment to Woronicz's lone figure on stage is a bassist, Brian Ellington, who occupies a perch above the stage and provides a soundtrack to the war and the moments of intimacy in the tale.
One-person shows, as we've said recently, are typically theater peoples' theater. (We've now been to three in the last five months, including Black and Blue Boys/Broken Men at Berkeley Rep, and Humor Abuse at A.C.T.) In the case of An Iliad, the biggest draw is in observing the feat performed by Woronicz, and how he tackles this tale and takes on the voices of various characters in a brisk 100 minutes. The play itself, and certain contrivances in the direction, aren't without their flaws. There were a number of moments when we lost the thread, drifted off, and longed for an intermission or just some relief from that single voice. But as a master class in oration, and in classical storytelling, it works marvelously.
An Iliad plays through November 18. Get tickets here, or call the box office at 510 647-2949. If you're under 30, you get half-price.
