Now is the summer of our discontent. If you'd like a little theatrical relief from all that's ailing America's body politic, Anne Bogart and SITI Company are probably not your ticket.
Their new adaptation of Euripides' "The Trojan Women," which begins previews Thursday at the Getty Villa's outdoor amphitheater, aims to rekindle the original political intent of a play that drives home an unrelentingly dark vision of what war does to victims and victors alike.
Bogart has long been an experimental theater eminence, often trying to counteract what she sees as the American stage's tendency to reassure audiences and settle for low stakes. Her decision to direct "The Trojan Women" now has a lot to do with the dismaying events surrounding its premiere in 415 BC and how those times reflect the United States in 2011.
With his country fighting to maintain its wealth and empire, Euripides asked Athenians to pause to consider what the incessant Peloponnesian War with Sparta was doing to their glorious city-state.
Months before "The Trojan Women" premiered, Athens had slaughtered every man and enslaved every woman and child on the neutral island of Melos for refusing to take its side.
Meanwhile, war drums were beating. Athens was equipping a fleet to invade far-away Sicily as Euripides' play was debuting, according to Oxford classicist Gilbert Murray's introduction to his 1915 translation. Based on Homer's epics, "The Trojan Women" gives an anguished portrayal of the defeated Queen Hecuba and the remnants of her royal house being tormented by conquering Greeks who practice a cold-hearted realpolitik. The play won second prize at that year's festival of Dionysus but did not deter the invasion. The Sicilian campaign — the epitome of a war of choice — was a disastrous turning point, according to historian Donald Kagan's "The Peloponnesian War," spelling eventual doom for the "golden age" of Athens and hastening its permanent exit as an important player on the world stage.
With America engaged in its own long, grueling wars, Bogart wants audiences to consider whether history can repeat. The not-so-veiled warning Euripides issued in "The Trojan Women" was that a beacon of democracy and culture could waste its treasure and throw away its moral standing.
"Sounds kind of familiar, doesn't it?" Bogart said recently, during a break in a rehearsal. "I don't think you can experience this play without thinking about the unconscionable wars we've perpetrated and the consequences for the future. What's happening these days could be the end of any affluence in this country."
Bogart has a certain standing to opine about American wars. Her father was a career Navy officer and her maternal grandfather, Adm. Raymond A. Spruance, commanded the U.S. forces at the pivotal Battle of Midway, turning the tide against Imperial Japan during World War II.
Given their druthers, the folks in charge of the Getty's ancient theater program would have preferred something a little lighter. Staging a major outdoor production of an ancient play each September — the budget for "The Trojan Women" is about $400,000 — they like to alternate season by season between comedy and tragedy. This year was supposed to be comedy's turn.
Norman Frisch, head of the theater program, said he's long been a fan of Bogart's and relished the chance to bring in SITI Company, whose 20th anniversary is next year. He asked if she would consider doing a different play by Euripides. The problem wasn't that "The Trojan Women" is too pointed, Frisch said, but that it's widely acknowledged to have serious dramatic drawbacks. The original script is notoriously bleak and monolithic — just one disaster after another for the title characters.
"In candor, one can hardly call 'The Trojan Women' a good piece of work," Richmond Lattimore wrote in an introduction to his 1950s translation of the play, "but it seems nevertheless to be a great tragedy."
Never mind the drawbacks; Bogart and SITI Company had their hearts set on "The Trojan Women," and Frisch says he knew better than to get in the way of artists with a passion.
The new adaptation by Jocelyn Clarke, a male dramaturge from Dublin who has worked frequently with SITI, aims to mend Euripidean flaws with fresh inventions. One is a climactic confrontation between Hecuba and Odysseus, whom Euripides had left offstage as the unseen agent of the Trojan women's degradation.
Bogart opened rehearsals to the Getty's antiquities curators, wanting their input. She and Clarke had planned to dispense with the play's choral odes — philosophical poems that don't advance the action or deepen the characters.
