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| Photo By Rich Sofranko |
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Miranda McGee and Kelly Mengelkoch star in Women of
Troy.
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Cincinnati Shakespeare Company (CSC) has launched its new Studio Series with a pair of one-acters that, at first glance, might seem oddly assembled but, in performance, show a sort of mutual resonance. Each is a ceremony: The first of grieving and loss; the second of defense against life's infinite, terrifying mystery. Both are thoroughly satisfying demonstrations of theater as a ritual for comprehension and catharsis.
The evening opens with Euripides' great 415 B.C. tragedy, The Women of Troy, in a freely adapted, 70-minute production that its co-directors have laced with harrowing contemporary interpolations. After the interval comes an exhilarating production of The Dumb Waiter, the 50-year-old script that cornerstones playwright Harold Pinter's long fruitful career -- a career crowned in 2005 with the Nobel Prize for literature.
Women of Troy takes up the plight of the ruined city's royal widows, once that trick horse with its belly full of sneaky Greek soldiers has breached the gates and brought the 10-year Trojan War to its blood-drenched end. Hecuba (Miranda McGee) was wife to Troy's dead king and mother to four dead princes. Andromache (Kelly Mengelkoch) is widow to Hector and mother of the boy child who will become the play's final victim. Helen (Hayley Clark), whose face launched a thousand ships, is widowed of Paris, whose mania for her started the whole bloody mess. Cassandra (Sara Clark) is un-married, hence un-widowed, but cursed by the gods and doomed to slavery to Greek king Agamemnon.
Their separate tragedies interlock and emerge, primarily as monologues played against a chorus of keening -- with occasional interruptions by Greek victors and brief, resonant asides about rapes, murders and atrocities in Hiroshima, Darfur, Bosnia, Rwanda and Nazi Germany.
There are no overt references to Iraq. None are needed. Matt Maupin's mother would be in apt company with these grieving women.
CSC's artistic director, Brian Isaac Phillips, and one of the company's ablest young actors, Rob Jansen, constructed and co-directed the piece, coaching a powerful exhibition of towering grief from McGee and a heart-rending performance from Mengelkoch. Hayley Clark makes Helen an antic, self-loving slut and supplies some needed comic relief. The four women, plus Corinne Mohlenhoff, act as chorus behind each other, blending choral reading, singing and dance-like movement into a seamless backstop of grieving. An introductory appearance by god of the sea Poseidon (Matt Johnson in a white dinner jacket) and goddess of wisdom and weaving Athene (Mohlenhoff in mink, diamonds and décolletage) adds a Noel Coward touch that's arch, jarring and sibilant.
With The Dumb Waiter CSC's estimable actor Giles Davies proves he is just as agile and intuitive as a director. It doesn't hurt that he has the ever-resourceful Jeremy Dubin and an astonishing, new-this-season company member, Josh Stamoolis, to work with. From the get-go, the production crackles with focused energy and the simmering, background menace that are Pinter trademarks and constant elements in terse, brilliant later scripts of his such as The Caretaker, Old Times and Betrayal -- the latter of which CSC presented in a splendid production (with Dubin) in 2000.
Mystery abounds. Neither from the script nor from this fine production of The Dumb Waiter will you learn why Ben (Dubin) and Gus (Stamoolis) are holed up, armed and waiting, in a bleak, windowless room. Ben is the more threatening of the two; Gus is the more alarmed. But why? Of what? An envelope skids into the room. It contains matches but no other message -- unless, indeed, the matches are a message. And who has moved in upstairs and keeps sending down orders for food in the dumb waiter?
As in all Pinter scripts, the pauses between and within sentences are as fraught and as ritualistic as the words themselves. Dubin and Stamoolis make the most of both.
Will Turbyne's set for Waiter is properly cheap and chilly. His set for Women is fussy and cluttered. Danielle Siler's costumes are on the mark. Women of Troy grade: B+; The Dumb Waiter grade: A+
THE WOMEN OF TROY and THE DUMB WAITER, presented by Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, continue through Jan. 28.
