Catharsis is a vocabulary word from dry lessons about ancient Greek drama. Emotional release through art. A term that went along with fifth-century B.C. amphitheatres and distant stories about vindictive humans following the will of the gods. At the Denver Center Theatre Company, in association with the Royal Shakespeare Company, "Tantalus" offers a vibrant definition of catharsis. Adapted from John Barton's set of new plays on Greek mythology, the cycle does more than dust off Agamemnon and the Trojan horse. It draws on the storytelling powers of words, masks, and actors, and on imagination prompted by theatrical illusions, to make the challenges faced by mythic characters accessible and relevant. Directed by Sir Peter Hall and Edward Hall, the ten-hour epic cycle (presented in digestible one-hour segments grouped into three parts) arouses amusement, shock, wonder, suspense, fear, contemplation, and recognition. During the curtain call, the company removes their masks and reveals their faces. The simultaneous senses of release from the story and of connection between long-ago characters and the people who just re-created and received the myths is emotionally overwhelming. Even a critic can be rendered speechless (at least temporarily).
"Tantalus" traces the story of the Trojan War, examining its outbreak (part one), its conclusion with the wooden horse (part two), and its repercussions during the homecomings (part three). The stories focus on family relationships, loss and revenge, leadership, and the influence of the gods' prophecies. The pace is swift, propelled by conflict, humor, and spectacle. Attending "Tantalus" is less of a marathon than one might expect. The matinee first part is followed by a luxurious pause for an excellent family-style Greek dinner, then three more hours for part two. The conclusion is performed the next afternoon (weekends) or evening (weekdays). One-day marathons are also presented. (As demonstrated three weeks after opening, the Denver Center ran the entire operation with impressive efficiency.)
The production begins with an elderly man in a white linen suit and straw hat hawking figurines to bikini-clad women sunbathing on a beach. The women buy a story instead of statuettes of Zeus. The patient poet spins fragments of tales and fills in the lost bits, not unlike Barton during his seventeen-year writing of the verse script. (The Denver version is considered an adaptation of Barton's recently published plays, with additional text by production dramaturg Colin Teevan.) The poet and chorus connect the audience to the warriors, suppliants, and families of ancient legend. Part of the story is told, while much of it is enacted. Offstage events, often prophesied, ripple into onstage reactions.
The chorus begins as bright, curious listeners. As the tales of sacrifice and duty unfold, these observers start to participate. They question Clytemnestra: how can you sacrifice your daughter, Iphigenia, so your husband, Agamemnon, can have winds to sail to Troy to rescue your sister, Helen? What is the truth? From the women's contemporary viewpoint, outrageous behavior needs a rational explanation. The chorus gradually becomes more engaged in the action, and during the second part, they don timeless linen garments and masks to accept roles as story characters themselves, Trojan women enslaved by the Western soldiers as war prizes. They transform from indignant outsiders reacting to rape (frequent news in "Tantalus") to cowering, naked victims. The audience's surrogate is brutalized by the violence of chaos, then perseveres with courage. Ultimately, they demand justice and want to blame Helen for their misery.
The directors Hall (father and son) also draw the audience into the action. They blur boundaries by spreading the play from the thrust stage into the house, using the aisles for actor exits and entrances. The Myrmidons (Achilles' Storm Troopers, descended from ants) whoosh past on their way to war. Iphigenia nobly processes up the center aisle toward her sacrifice. Ancient permeates modern.
Irish composer Mick Sands's music and Japanese designer Sumio Yoshii's lighting transform the sandy circle of Greek designer Dionysis Fotopoulos's suggestive set into an enchanted sphere. The live music is influenced by Balkan folk singing, klezmer music, and African drumming. As another tool for storytelling, it encourages the imagination. So do the enormous rolling wheels signifying the Trojan horse, and the giant serpent puppets. A fire ring, a small pond, and onstage rainfall add technical treats more satisfying than the occasional atmospheric video projections that are used.
Everyone except the poet, his assistant, and (initially) the chorus wears flesh-colored masks for all roles. Designed by Fotopoulos and crafted by Denver's Kevin Copenhaver, the masks entirely cover the actors' faces from chin to forehead, with openings for the eyes and mouth. They are detailed with human expression: a furrowed brow, proud cheekbones, weary bags under the eyes. Mics tucked inside enhance the slightly muffled speech. The masks require the actors to exaggerate their body language, creating dynamic images. They also hide the actors with anonymity; the audience watches mythical characters.
The cast of "Tantalus" features four American actors and four British, with a chorus of ten and an ensemble of nine extras. The entire company's stamina is staggering. They conquer the stage marathon with seemingly unflagging energy as they play multiple distinctive roles crafted during six months of rehearsal. Ann Mitchell portrays Hecuba as a resolute leader of the devastated Trojan women, until she is reduced to a dog's frantic digging and angry barking at the murder of her son. Mitchell also plays the matronly Nurse, who tends Agamemnon's cursed family with humor and wisdom. Mia Yoo's Electra is a defiant tomboy infatuated with her father (Agamemnon); her Iphigenia (Electra's sister) is valiant and distinguished; her Hermione is a nightmare of a Southern belle. David Ryall plays the poet as an affable gentleman, King Peleus as a humorous rogue who leads with his heart if not his head, and Tyndareus as a patriarch who could be Father Time.
Robert Petkoff begins as Achilles, a beast-like young warrior dashing nearly naked toward battle. As Neoptolemus, Petkoff regresses into a playful, rambunctious ten-year-old barely able to wield a sword but eager to honor the memory of his father, Achilles. Through unwanted cunning, the boy quickly grows into a cruel destroyer. He emerges from slaughtering Priam at the end of the Trojan War, his body covered from head to toe in blood, wearing his father's gold armor. Petkoff taps the wild energy of Achilles and the shattered commitment to truth of Neoptolemus to unleash a savage warrior.
After establishing Agamemnon's exhausting commitment to his family and city, Greg Hicks plays the elderly king of Troy, Priam, in the second part of "Tantalus." The smooth, resonant voice is recognizable. But the actor who portrayed the agile, ponytailed general has now become a feeble old man, tottering on stilts and canes above his people as he must decide what to do with the gigantic wooden horse at his city's impenetrable gates. His power is as fragile as his health. Hicks bends nearly in half, shaking, at the news of Priam's sister's death. (Her capture fifty years earlier initiated Helen's abduction and the subsequent war.) Later, he is helped to his knees to pray to Apollo, then sprawls in the sand. The weight of making the right decisions has become an obviously devastating burden.
As the sea nymph Thetis, Alyssa Bresnahan is lithe and seductive, a slippery shape-shifter capable of being water or woman. As Cassandra, who wears a punk rocker's magenta wig, Bresnahan owns her space as only a brash outcast can. She clambers, perches, and slides on the huge broken head of a toppled statue, crouches to observe others, and shouts Apollo's prophecies, which no one will believe.
Many of the events in "Tantalus" are handed down from the gods, often as prophecies uttered in Greek by the soothsayer Calchas. The characters try to avoid the inevitable. As Iphigenia says, and later Agamemnon echoes, "Though the gods control our beginnings and our endings, the middle of a story is ours and it's open." Perhaps, suggests Iphigenia, human foibles are all an amusement for the gods.
In the most stunning scene of "Tantalus," Agamemnon and Cassandra free themselves from the gods' ties. A priestess of Apollo, Cassandra wears a mask through which the god can speak. On the way back to his unfaithful wife in Mycenae, the devoted Agamemnon learns from his war slave Cassandra that he will be killed by his cousin and wife. Because he knows the history of revenge and curses in his family, he believes the prophecy. This dissolves Cassandra's defensive, wild exterior. When Apollo's spirit leaves her, Agamemnon removes Cassandra's mask. The actor is revealed. Seeing Bresnahan's face, hair, and expressions after accepting for hours the convention of a mask is astounding. Even though they seem human, the mythic characters in this epic story have been removed from today by a layer of mask. Cassandra and an unmasked Agamemnon dance naked before a fire to the gentle sound of the muses. When they pause between the past and the future to be "in the now," they are free of the burdens of history and prophecy.
So how does a play cycle on revenge end? Both Barton and Hall struggled with the answer, evidently. The production's conclusion relies on the trial of Helen at Delphi, home of the oracle. The chorus of displaced Trojan women demands justice and truth. They want to place blame for their losses. Unfortunately, the production's trial is undermined by excessive humor. The chorus and ensemble, dressed in hooded black robes and wearing masks from photographs of expressive faces of old Balkan women, become a peanut gallery. They repeatedly rattle their staffs, giggle, and heckle the participants and gods alike. Also, in order to establish the truth, a witness is called. Enter the deus ex machina, Aethra, an ancient woman who saw Helen's abduction and subsequent events in Troy. Even if the explanation is satisfactory (Helen of Troy was an image created by the gods while the real Helen was deserted in Egypt), the means of revelation is disappointingly weak.
An epilogue returns to the storyteller on the beach with the women. The poet reminds everyone that Tantalus is trapped by the gods beneath a dangling rock, just out of reach of refreshing water and sweet fruits, eternally threatened by the promise of imminent doom. A story can tantalize its listeners, pulling them into the action and emotions and leaving them with a lesson and an uncertain feeling about what really happened and what was filled in by the imagination. The poet tells the dazed women of the chorus this. Shaking off the spell of the theatre, the audience hears, too. And then the curtain call, and the masks come off...
There's a reason that theatre has endured for more than 2500 years. The power of sharing a story that examines human relationships, struggles, and triumphs within a life ruled by fate-and of relying on the creativity and imagination of both artists and audience to do so-is the gift of "Tantalus" to a chaotic world at a new millennium.