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2008-09-15

by Ed Rampell

'Agamemnon' Review

Summary

Aeschylus’ antiwar Greek tragedy at the Getty Villa

Article

Many moons before there was a Tracy Letts, David Mamet, Sam Sheppard, August Wilson, Edward Albee, Arthur Miller, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Clifford Odets, Bertolt Brecht, Eugene O’Neill, George Bernard Shaw, Moliere, Lope De Vega, William Shakespeare and the other giants of the stage there was the first great Greek dramatist Aeschylus, the godfather of playwrights and screenwriters since time immemorial. For the first time in my life I saw one of the Greek tragedies performed live and – very appropriately – in an amphitheatre, like the original plays were performed during the golden age of Greece’s city-states.

It’s eerie and – well – rather tragic that director Stephen Wadsworth’s current production of Agamemnon, which premiered more than two and half millennia ago, remains, alas, so timely. The drama is not so much about the Trojan War per se but about its aftermath, and how warfare affects its participants and those on the home front. In contemporary times there have been news reports about returning Iraq veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder who kill their wives; Agamemnon has an interesting twist on postwar domestic abuse. Suffice it to say without revealing specific plot spoilers that Aeschylus’ The Oresteia is reputed to have caused Greek children to faint, men to piss their togas and pregnant women to go into labor. (Then again Jacques Tati’s Monsier Hulot’s Holiday caused my pregnant mother to laugh so hard that she went into labor, and, voila!, a film historian/critic was born.)

Agamemnon is the first play in the trilogy called The Oresteia – seems our man Aeschylus created the mini-series. Tyne Daly delivers a rock-‘em sock-‘em performance as King Agamemnon’s thwarted wife Clytaemnestra. Although this six time Emmy-winner is best known to audiences for her little screen roles as a female detective juggling law enforcement with family life on the 1980s TV series Cagney & Lacey and as the likewise feisty mother of a judge on the 1999-2004 series Judging Amy, Daly is also quite an accomplished stage actress. She scored a Tony for the 1990 Broadway revival of Gypsy plus a nomination for 2006’s Rabbit Hole, and is no stranger to Angeleno theater audiences, who saw her in L.A. productions such as William Inge’s heart-aching Come Back, Little Sheba.

Clytaemnestra personifies the saying “hell hath no fury as a woman scorned” (sorry Aeschylus, that line is actually believed to be from William Congreve's 1697 play, The Mourning Bride). Clytaemnestra’s husband, King Agamemnon (Delroy Lindo, who has appeared in films such as The Cider House Rules and Malcolm X, as well as in many plays here and beyond, including A Raisin in the Sun) returns home to Argos “victorious” after the decade-long siege of Troy, which he has won at unimaginable cost, including the sacrifice of daughter Iphigenia (Kathryne Dora Brown) to the gods. In addition, he makes the mistake of bringing his concubine, the prophetess Cassandra (the show stealing, hell raising Francesca Faridany) who is the sister of Paris. (Of course, his stealing of the beautiful wife of Agamemnon’s brother Menelaus -- the famous Helen of Troy -- triggered the Battle of Troy, Trojan horse and all, which was ancient history – if it ever took place at all, that is – when The Oresteia premiered in circa 458 B.C.) Cassandra’s thwarting of Apollo’s attempted rape of her caused this god to curse her with the gift of prophecy which none would believe – until it was too late. Like Leon Trotsky, Cassandra was the prophet outcast, and Faridany has a field day tearing up the scenery with her histrionics (and I mean this in the best sense, as Faridany’s acting is truly a tour de force not to be missed by theater aficionados).

Given the endless wars Washington is constantly embroiled in, the plot, topic and language is strikingly contemporary, with returning King Agamemnon calling for war crimes tribunals. (Ahh, that’s the stuff dreams are made of: an international court of justice trying Bush regime leaders for crimes against humanity – the one possible silver lining in the cloud of the Iraq and Afghan War, Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, et al, horrors.) But the play’s production notes point out that renowned interpreter Robert Fagles’ Agamemnon translation “extends [Aeschylus’] language towards a contemporary American audience,” so I don’t know if the playwright himself used the words “war crimes” and “tribunals,” as the original text is, to use the old cliché, literally Greek to me. By the way, given the play’s antiwar theme, it’s worth mentioning that Tyne Daly was in the frontlines of the Hollywood Boulevard peace marches just before Agamemnon – uh, I mean Bush – launched his unprovoked attack on a Baghdad that hadn’t even run away with Helen.

The spectacular al fresco amphitheatre setting at the Getty Villa, perched on a hillside overlooking the Pacific Ocean and restored to look like an ancient Roman villa, enhances the ambiance and enjoyment of the play. The Getty’s posh digs stand in stark contrast to that other Malibu amphitheatre, the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum in Topanga Canyon, created by the actor best known for playing Grandpa Walton on the long running, Depression Era-set 1970s TV series, The Waltons. Geer was blacklisted in the 1950s for refusing to be an informer during his testimony to the House Un-American Activities, and retreated to Malibu where he pursued acting at the rustic Theatricum (and also co-starred in 1954’s Hollywood Blacklist classic, Salt of the Earth). The Theatricum is currently presenting Eugene O’Neill’s autobiographical masterpiece Long Day’s Journey Into Night, one of the definitive works (along with Agamemnon) about dysfunctional families, substance abuse, betraying one’s talent and self and more. Will’s daughter Ellen Geer delivers a harrowing performance as Mary Cavan Tyrone, the quintessential desperate housewife, in this powerfully poignant production co-starring William Dennis Hunt (James Tyrone), Jim LeFave (Jamie Tyrone) and Aaron Hendry (Edmund Tyrone). If this moving, heartbreaking ensemble cast ably directed by Heidi Helen Davis and O’Neill’s immortal dialogue fail to move you to tears, you are either heartless or the lucky survivor of that rare treasure: an untroubled, happy child.

Agamemnon plays at the Getty Villa, 17985 Pacific Coast Highway, Malibu, on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00 p.m. through Sept. 27. For more info: (310) 440-7300; www.getty.edu.

Journey is being performed under Malibu’s starry, starry skies Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00 p.m. through September 27 at 1419 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd.; (310)455-3723.