PHOTO ⓒCRAIG SCHWARTZ
“The Greeks fought the Persians in gold-crested helmets,/ from cliffs they hurled the invader harshly into the sea.” – Velimir Khlebnikov, “Zangezi” (1922)
Fought in 480 B.C., the Battle of Salamis was a turning point in history, but perhaps more so it was a turning point in theater. Written by the prolific Aeschylus, the Neil Simon of his day, it’s not only the earliest Greek play to survive, but apparently the only historically-based play from that era still extant. It must have had a long run on the Athenian equivalent of Broadway because it picked up a few Tonys back in 472 B.C.
But wait, there’s more. Aeschylus himself may have participated in that key battle; it’s known that he fought in one a little earlier. So, talk about firsthand experience.
Here again he pulled off something unique or even clever, depending on your point of view. He told the story of the Persian defeat in “The Persians” from the Persian perspective, and remember, Aeschylus was Greek, and on the winning team so to speak. Now, that’s remarkable, no?. As others have pointed out before me, that’s like one of our playwrights, well, Neil Simon for example, crafting a play from the perspective of the scattered Taliban or the royal court of Saddam Hussein. Oh, and furthermore, from a sympathetic point of view.
And so, speaking of royal courts, “The Persians” takes place in the royal court of Susa, in what is of course present-day Iran. The news from the front, filtering in, isn’t good. The Persians, under the leadership of Xerxes, their young king, sent in a large fleet of warships, but the Greeks had more fire in their hearts.
The play, in a recent translation by Aaron Poochigan, is being performed outdoors through Sept. 27 in the amphitheater at the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades. The production was created and is being performed by SITI Company, under the direction of Anne Bogart. This is the same company that presented their take on “The Trojan Women” (after Euripides) three years prior in the same venue.
Being an early piece of theater, or proto-theater, “The Persians” lacks much of the crowd-pleasing gusto and the belly-laughs we look for in modern plays and musicals. There aren’t many chuckles in “The Persians,” no shootouts at the OK Corral, although there are plenty of long faces and a lot of wailing.
If you haven’t noticed – think of Antigone, Medea, Andromache – the mater dolorosa, the aggrieved woman, be she mother, wife, sister, daughter, seems to be a staple of Greek or Roman tragedy. You can count of a bucketful of tears, and if we want to be done with it quickly we can simply say that “The Persians” is one long lamentation.
But it’s also a very stylistic lament because SITI tends to adhere to a spartan, austere, and classically stylized approach in their theater-dance performances. One thinks of antique vases and frescoes and also Japanese Noh theater. Simply put, there is a great deal of reserve in the movement of the actors and a modicum of expressed emotion.
That said, “The Persians” embodies more choreography than naturalistic acting, and that choreography even extends to the dialogue, which isn’t so much conversation as it is a kind of declamation or recital. This gives the performance a bit of a ritualistic feel, which probably isn’t what Aeschylus intended, but who can say, the original playbills haven’t been preserved.
The minimalist setting – the Getty Villa entrance facade, draped with entire bolts of diaphanous orange cloth (the word “Christo!” may spring to mind) – works quite well, and there are white sculptural fragments littered behind them, on the shoreline of the steps under the loggia that spans this exterior wall. The accompanying music, that is, the soundscape that underlies the seriousness of what we’re observing, is also effective, but don’t expect any show tunes as this isn’t “Thoroughly Modern Millie.”
There are nine actors , all of them members of the chorus, and of those nine four individuals step out with defined roles: Ellen Lauren as Attossa, the Queen of Persia (widow of Dareius and mother of Xerxes), Will Bond as the Persian messenger, Stephen Duff Webber as the Ghost of King Dareius (father of Xerxes), and Gian-Murray Gianino as King Xerxes.
The costuming, by Nephelie Andonyadis, tries to subtly bend modern garb with ancient (in dark, funereal colors), and it pretty much works out fine, although Webber as Dareius tends to look more like an accountant than a deceased king. But don’t be sarcastic and say, Oh, I heard the van with the costumes had been delayed, because this is modern theater, folks, and to each his own.
PHOTO ⓒCRAIG SCHWARTZ
Will Bond as the bearer of ill tidings gives the impression of somebody roughed up a little in a back alley. He arrives, clutching an oar to symbolize he came by sea and not on the Orient Express, to announce that “Athens has killed our sons.” Bond delivers quite a riveting account of what happened, which is that Greek forces manhandled the Persians and then sent them packing like whimpering dogs, and maybe we think of Napoleon’s ragged troops beating a retreat from Moscow in the dead of winter, with many of them pursued and hunted down in the aftermath.
It’s a captivating sequence, as is the initial appearance of the Queen of Persian herself, regally emerging from the wings, wearing a splendid gown and trailing behind her a train so very long that we might expect to find a caboose on the end of it. Well, not that kind of train of course, but this one must have been 40, 50 feet, and towards the rear, being pulled right along, is a large sculptured head, as if severed from a statue, and definitely conveying decapitation or castration and all this implies. Riveting; don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
Xerxes himself, like so many classical warriors brought down by excessive pride or bravado, straggles in late. He’s regally tattered and seems dazed from his great loss: His team was trounced and didn’t even get on the scoreboard.
Well, although Aeschylus has sympathetically presented the Persian viewpoint, there is an admonitory and even chastising feel to the play, which could be read universally, or, more specifically, as don’t mess with the Greeks. I won’t say this is an anti-war play, but the consequences of war are grimly set down before us. We’re not out of line to regard “The Persians” as a cautionary tale and a funeral dirge.
Presumably there’s a lesson here for any modern nation set on invading another sovereign country under the pretext of protecting the homeland. It’s called the spin, although it’s gone under many names, and the outcome, as Xerxes found out, is never certain.
“The Persians”
Where: The Getty Villa, 17985 Pacific Coast Hwy., Pacific Palisades
When: Through Sept. 27. 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays
How much: $40 Thursday ($36 students, seniors); $42 Friday; $45 Saturday (no student or senior discounts on Friday or Saturday). Dinners available before each show
Call: (310) 440-7300
Online: getty.edu
