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Review
by Michael Scott Moore for SF Weekly, published December
19, 2001
The
Babes of War
This pacifist masterpiece has less to do with Afghanistan than the
Shotgun Players think
Since the Shotgun Players are the only local theater troupe to rearrange
their season in response to Sept. 11, and since There Will Be No
Trojan War is witty, durable, pacifist -- worth mounting even in
peacetime -- it seems impolite to ask the obvious question. But I'll
do it anyway: Does this play apply to Afghanistan? Jean Giraudoux wrote
it in 1935 as a warning to Europe about World War II. He was a career
diplomat, so he could see how the wind was blowing. But even then his
artful cry for common sense applied more to 1914 than it did to 1939.
In some ways it was dated from the start.
The play does have a sprinkling of lines that apply to Sept. 11, and
the Shotgun Players try to emphasize them in a solid, modern-dress production.
Malcolm Brownson plays an authoritative Hector in a presidential suit
and tie. John Patrick Moore is a shambling, irresponsible Paris in an
open silk shirt and puka shells. Hector's royal parents, Hecuba and
Priam (Trish Mulholland and Fred Ochs), look like rich relations from
Florida; Cassandra the prophetess (Kimberly Wilday) hangs around sultrily
in sweats and a fur-collared suede coat.
Giraudoux meant the script as a farce, not an allegory, so it works
better as a general anti-war play than as a specific protest. Hector
the Trojan general wants to avoid a conflict with the Greeks by sending
Helen home. The undoing of his peace campaign has a stupid, familiar
inevitability. "Explain to me what you think Helen has given to
us, worth a quarrel with the Greeks?" he asks. Demokos the warmongering
poet and the other Trojans can imagine lots of reasons for keeping Helen
(thus plunging them into 10 long years of grief and waste), but it comes
down to blustery pride, which more than anything else mimics the start
of World War I. World War II turned out to be different, because Hitler
spoiled for a fight; this Afghan war is different, too.
Still, there are interesting echoes. "When war is in the air,"
says Hector, "everyone learns to live in a new atmosphere: falsehood."
Demokos says Trojan soldiers need to be "reinforced by the spiritual
and moral intoxication which the poets can pour into them ... I have
a notion to compare War's face with Helen's." (He serves as a kind
of Fox News Channel for Troy.) Busiris the lawyer points out that the
Greek ships massing off the coast have hoisted their flags to a position
reserved for saluting cattle barges. Hector can't ignore that, can he?
"The situation can only be resolved in one of two ways," declares
Demokos. "To swallow an outrage, or return it."
Director Patrick Dooley and his actors bring out more of Giraudoux's
wackiness than a more stolid group would: for example, Andy Alabran's
bare-assed taunting of the Greeks; Trish Mulholland's excellent speech
as Hecuba, comparing war to the hind end of a baboon ("scarlet,
scaly, glazed"); and Clive Worsley's hammy performance as the poet,
at the piano, composing a new anthem for Troy. The flip side of this
approach is that the whole cast seems uncomfortable with Giraudoux's
formal language. Roxana Ortega plays an alluring Helen, but not a very
sophisticated one. Moore is a '70s-playboy Paris who can't quite pull
off his diplomatic lines. And Wilday's Cassandra lacks a madwoman's
gravitas. Cassandra needs to be young and beautiful, as Wilday is, but
also crazed, like Ophelia -- she should rage out her unheeded prophecies
of war. Wilday drops her prophecies in bitter little asides, like Jennifer
Aniston in a snit. Dooley must think this contrast with the Berkeley
Rep's Cassandra last April is funny, and it is, up to a point, but other
touches of humor are more successful.
Trojan War is a Giraudoux masterpiece -- a chatty, 2-1/2-hour
masterpiece -- and by rehearsing and mounting it at the last minute
the Shotgun Players have made a real contribution to a generally flagging
season of local theater. No current Bay Area play has as much meat and
significance as this one. However, the moral text for Afghanistan is
not Giraudoux's. For me that text is the Bhagavad-Gita, or "Krishna's
Counsel in Time of War," about the Indian prince Arjuna going reluctantly
to battle. I think Giraudoux would have admitted the difference between
a frivolous, taunting banner flown from a Greek mast and three fuel-heavy
jetliners flown into inhabited buildings, since Krishna himself advises
that pacifism is sometimes more craven than war. The trick, he tells
Arjuna, is to keep the fight from becoming an exercise in greedy, self-interested
slaughter. Whether Bush and his Cabinet have the will for that trick
is another, altogether disturbing, question, which this play doesn't
quite touch.
sfweekly.com | originally published:
December 19, 2001
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Original article
on the web at
http://sfweekly.com/issues/2001-12-19/stage.html/1/index.cfml
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