| Iliad: “Arresting, Compelling, a ”Must-experience” |
At National Theatre Wales |
| National Theatre Wales , Ffwrnes, Llanelli , September 26, 2015 |
The Arts Desk was there:“Iliad is the third collaboration between National Theatre Wales and “the two Mikes”, directorial duo Pearson and Brookes. The pair have been responsible for two previous highlights of the still young company’s back catalogue, The Persians (2010) and Coriolan/us (2012). “Aeschylus was re-imagined on a Brecon Beacons military range and Shakespeare recast in an RAF aircraft hangar, so it is perhaps surprising that the ultimate epic drama of war is staged in an actual theatre, the compact and modern Ffwrnes in Llanelli. “War Music” is the generic title of Christopher Logue’s Homer, five full-length volumes of poetry published between 1981 and 2005, but also the specific name given to this production, the final instalment of NTW’s four-part series, which introduces “box-set theatre” to south-west Wales. “Audience members have the choice to attend one stand-alone production or to see all four parts, either on consecutive nights or at one of two “marathon” performances (all day or all night). The polyphony of voices works particularly well in a Welsh context “Logue’s opening line, “Now hear this”, is a reminder of the Iliad’s oral origins, and despite the constant presence of black text on white screens all around the space, War Music is primarily an assault on our auditory faculties. The polyphony of voices works particularly well in a Welsh context; this is a culture that loves the sound of voices, be they singing or speaking. Dylan Thomas’ “play for voices” Under Milk Wood was written just across the estuary, and Logue’s cinematic rendering of Homer is a reminder that this epic poem, too, is primarily about spoken delivery. “Performance levels are, however, somewhat uneven; for me the piece only really took full flight in the interactions between Richard Lynch and Llion Williams, both of whom consistently enunciated with a richness of timbre that was sometimes lacking elsewhere. “The mid-sized auditorium is stripped back to monochrome minimalism: the only “props” are piles of black tyres and stacks of white plastic chairs, some of which are transmogrified into makeshift trees during the course of the evening. A gargantuan projection screen accents the cinematic styling of the poetry, but its widescreen landscapes are unobtrusive. “Microphones hang on long wires suspended from the ceiling. Occasionally the “Gods” – impressively played by local teenagers – make an appearance, but in this final part of the saga it is Fate rather than the Gods which muscles in once Patroclus reaches the wall of the besieged city. “The unfussy set, unobtrusive visuals and cinematic surround-sound combine to create a world that feels, at times, like you are inside an audiobook. There are the lulls inevitable in any longform listening exercise and the fourth episode was not a great advert for the 11-and-a-half-hour version, but on its own terms of rendering Logue’s Homer as theatrical vision, Iliad is a triumph. “The poetry veers, sometimes violently, between evocations of war and peace, apprehension, brutal violence, aftermath and regret. It is, like Homer’s original, a full and moving account of the pity of war. There is light and shade: armour “the colour of moonlight” and “noises the like of which you and I never hear,” screeches, battle cries and haunting laments. “Logue’s text is the star, and Pearson and Brookes’ design innovation might also have inadvertently created the next generation of open-mike nights. At the end, famously, “there is no end”; nevertheless, “the two Mikes” have created yet another production that will stick in the memory like a spear in the sand on a Trojan beach. * * * * Get the Chance was there: “A bright autumn day in Llanelli grew even brighter as National Theatre Wales’ marathon production of the Iliad opened to an enthusiastic audience. “Directors Pearson and Brookes have previous, (Coriolanus, The Persians), and this multi-media staging of Logue’s War Music, itself derived from Homer’s account of the end of the Trojan War, is up there. “As you would expect the sound is compelling, always haunting it was at times almost wistful but the potential for bellicosity and pent-up violence was always present. “The projections range from largely static landscapes (in Wales?) which, whilst charming, seemed to be a long way from the Eastern Mediterranean and video headshots of local teenagers playing Gods. “A team of six narrators carried the three hundred pages of poetry with aplomb, all were convincing. “Daniel Hawksford made a strong early showing and Richard Lynch grew into his roles but Melanie Walters stood out with her diction and accents and her acting through gesture and her facial projection. “The use of teleprompters restricted dramatic potential to the use of the upper body and engendered a sense of “talking heads” which diverted the attention of the audience away from the action and on to the screen, it seemed a bit like talking with friends in a pub with the TV on and finding that the usual dynamic cannot be established. "Such an approach demands good tone and timbre in the voice and clear diction and enunciation which was provided on a consistent basis but the strongest effects came when the cast performed in choirs, as in the death of the bull sequence which was deeply moving. “The language conveyed the message. The elision of the ancient (7th century B.C.) and the modern and of the catastrophic and continuing threat of war, conflict and displacement, was conveyed admirably and the references to “helicopters”, ”privatise”, ”Australia” and “curly-girlie hair” could have disorientated, but did not. At its best it was outstanding, occasionally it was prosaic and sometimes it was plain irritating. Building the set as you go along invites the audience to care and to share in the process and whilst some of the effects, like the raising of giant blooms on tripods were certainly dramatic, in the manner of raising the US flag on Iwo Jima, they also seemed to be rather pointless and distracting. “Audience engagement also involved being ushered around the space to make way for yet another “construction”, the audience becoming the set and, more welcomingly for the chosen few, being invited to lie down and play dead. “The marathon was sold out and as part four started the England v Wales rugby game kicked off. But the “literati”, as I heard us being described by a passing rugby fan (who must himself have been somewhat literate) were loyal to the cause. I recognised many who had been there at 10.30 that morning. “This was not just drama. It was arresting and compelling, a ”must-experience” experience. The standing ovation was testimony to the power of this production and to the tenacity of the audience and I was delighted to be with them. * * * * From the Telegraph “Here is the National Theatre Wales's production of Logue's epic poem, a theatrical undertaking requiring stamina of Hector-sized proportions that splits the text into four 120 minute playlets and which the audience can see separately or over a single night in a marathon performance on October 3. It is a monumental story of Gods and men, heroes and cannon fodder, the glory of war and the agony of grief, and shaped most of all by the epic falling out between Agamemnon and Achilles, over a woman, on the eve of the Greek assault. “Logue's poetry – a blitzkrieg of crunchily alliterative language and image – is meant to be heard, not read and it's correspondingly the dramatic focus of Mike Pearson and Mike Brookes's static, bare-boned production. Five actors dressed in anonymous black sonorously narrate the text with the help of teleprompters as though on a ghostly film set, with the ad hoc seated audience largely left to imagine the action. “There are touches of sly humour: the meddlesome gods are played as sarky teenagers via video link. Yet other staging decisions feel perverse. As though to counter the high gloss beauty of the language, the set consists of hundreds of white plastic chairs, tyres and long thin plywood planks that are constantly moved about by a handful of stage hands. Sometimes this bears magnificent fruit, as when, at the end of The Husbands, Apollo wishes for the "Greeks to be thrown as shingle is onto a road" and the chairs are correspondingly hurled against a wall. At other times the arbitrary moving of tyres and wood from one side of the room to another takes on an almost existential futility that is entirely distracting. “Logue's text also suffers from cinema's love for sensational detail. There is little by way of character interiority beyond the alpha male posturing of its heroes. The moments of human intimacy are few and precious – the first furious confrontation between Achilles and Agamemnon for instance, or Achilles’s moment of bitter despair at the end of Red/Cold when he berates his friends for abandoning him. “So an austere production then, with an austerity set. Yet if you can stomach an all-nighter, I recommend seeing all four plays in one blast – together, they acquire a sinewy, hallucinatory intensity. And there is something raw and invigorating about hearing poetry spoken live from one person to another – a TV programme will never be able to achieve that.” * * * * Abridged from the full reviews which can be read at: https://www.theartsdesk.com/node/76134/view https://getthechance.wales/2015/09/27/review-iliad-ntw-by-brian-roper/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/theatre/what-to-see/iliad-national-theatre-wales-review/ |
Reviewed by: Adam Somerset |
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