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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2009 > November > 06 > Entry
Review: ‘The Trojan Women’
Those left behind by war — women, children, civilians — are marginalized all over again by history, their experiences typically not the stuff of record.
That’s been true to for millennia. And in a smart re-imagining of Euripides’ ‘The Trojan Women’ by Meghan Kennedy and Kimber Lee. we’re reminded that the ravages of war dramatized in ancient Greece resonate with equal tragedy thousands of years later.
Produced by the University of Texas Department of Theatre & Dance and inventively staged by director Halena Kays, this edgy, visceral interpretation of the saga of the survivors of the Greeks’ 10-year war with Troy smartly updates the ancient story to read as a contemporary parable yet doesn’t forsake the classic drama.
Grimy, exhausted, bruised and their hair shorn, the Trojan women emerge from a smoky ruin and face their fate: to spend their lives as slaves and concubines to their Greek conquerors. (Scenic designer Peter Holtin and lighting designer Cheng-Wei Teng create a dark, ruined world of urban rubble. Music by Kevin O’Donnell, played by a quartet in formal wear, adds plenty of atmosphere.)
As the Trojan queen Hecuba, Kate deBuys is alternately beaten down and raw, the life scratched out of her, and then steely with the will to rebel. When she confronts Menelaus — played as swaggering corporate swell by Rodney Richardson — Hecuba unleashes her most powerful weapon: words. And in playwright Kennedy and Lee give Hecuba nuanced contemporary words that nevertheless deliver intelligent bite.
And the cause of this decade-long war and ensuing wreckage? As Helen of Troy Verity Branco is all classic Hollywood vixen with elbow-length gloves and coiffed long dark curls. Branco exudes sensuality. Bu she is also a modern queen resentful of how she’s been made a scapegoat for a war.
Here again, it’s that smart balance of modern psychology and sensibility blended nicely classic character and drama — a balance that makes this ‘Trojan Women’ a smart story for our times.
‘The Trojan Women’ continues through Nov. 8. www.texasperformingarts.org
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