Stage Reviews : A Moody, Stinging ‘Trojan Women’

Ancient Greek tragedies are rarely staged in small theater--and basically never in our large houses--because they’re intimidating to audiences and they demand a rhetorical and visceral passion daunting to most actors and directors.

One experience with a Greek classic you would not regret is the stinging, moody evocation of the suffering of a captured city in director John Neville’s production of Euripides’ “The Trojan Women,” exceptionally produced by the L.A. Rep Company at the Tamarind Theatre in Hollywood.

Making his L.A. directorial debut, Neville, the well-known British actor and director and for many years a luminary at London’s Royal Shakespeare Company, has modernized the tragedy without violating or updating the text. His core of actors (largely trained at universities and theaters in Florida) were enrolled in a workshop conducted by Neville last year in L.A., and they enjoyed each other so much that Neville hatched “The Trojan Women” for them.

This, of course, is a drama about wailing women (ancient precursors, in a stark way, of the wailing royal women in “Richard III”). And the actresses playing Hecuba, Cassandra and Helen are all scorching in quite distinctive styles.

As Hecuba, the ravaged, humiliated Queen of Troy, Kimberly Chase derives her fierce power largely from the steady glare of her eyes, burning like hot coals. Rarely do you see an actor use her eyes for such impact on a stage. At the same time there’s a quiet passivity about Chase that also enlarges the pain. A remarkable performance.

Hecuba’s enslaved daughter, Cassandra, is another startling portrayal, delivered with maniacal focus by Kendall Hailey (the daughter of playwrights Oliver Hailey and Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey). Suzanne McKenney’s anguished Andromache, whose little boy (Eduardo Garcia) is hurled over the parapets by the conquering Greeks, contributes to the withering anti-war theme.

As for the woman who drove the Greeks to pillage and rape Troy, Helen (the woman who launched a thousand ships), is no wailer. Joy Kilpatrick’s Helen of Troy is the production’s shimmering contrast. Her dark eyebrows arched high up her forehead, Kilpatrick materializes like a bedazzling, coiled vixen in a yellow, backless gown, haughty and sensual enough to momentarily bedazzle the husband she betrayed (her executioner Menelaus, a sturdy Brandon Meyer).

Wisely staged with no intermission, the production integrates the standard Euripidean chorus into the action, with the ensemble fluidly choreographed by Tim Fox. Indispensable to the production, and contributing greatly to its bleak power, are the shorn, ragged costumes (designed by Lisa Jurkowski and producer Tom Kendall), the ominous music (composed by Christine Russell) and a painted canvas backdrop of seared, slashing colors emblematic of carnage and horror (scenic design by Mark Fulwider.

Seldom will you see a Greek classic staged better than this.