THEATER REVIEW : ‘Trojan’ Tale Drowns in Excess

People make exotic, wet entrances in “The Trojan Women.” That’s because Michael Arabian has staged the Euripides tragedy around--and in--the lagoon at CBS Studio Center. Soldiers swim to shore. Menelaus (James Harper) drives a Humvee (multipurpose Army vehicle) through the water and up an embankment. Helen (Valerie Wildman) floats ashore inside a blue garment bag. Why in a garment bag? Well, she’s Helen, and when she emerges, her hair needs to be perfect.

If this sounds like a kitschy take on the story of the defeated women of Troy at the hands of their Greek captors, it is. Styles and gimmicks and tones abound. Arabian has thrown every bone into the soup. He didn’t stop to taste it before serving it to company, though, or else he takes inordinate pride in eclecticism for its own sake.

Cassandra (Blanca Marsillach) is not an otherworldly visionary but a contemporary hellion who’s going to speak her piece, dammit. Helen is an overly sultry Jessica Rabbit who sports a tight red party dress and a good pedicure. Poseidon (Michael McFall) and Athena (Cindy Cheung) behave and dress like superheroes on a Saturday morning cartoon. Harper’s Menelaus is a chiseled GI Joe, shouting orders that get militaristically loud when he approaches the end of a sentence, like a Phil Hartman parody of George C. Scott’s “Patton.”

I liked the more measured performances: Angela Paton’s stoic Hecuba, a woman who’s seen it all, a bit reminiscent of Ruth Gordon. Mariette Hartley takes a classically dignified approach to Andromache. As the mother who must give her young son, Astyanax (Klee G. Bragger), to the Greek soldiers for slaughter, she has the most wrenching scene, and she plays it straight and well.

Her dignity is impaired, however, through no fault of her own. Arabian has surrounded her with a chorus of Trojan women who start singing pop and gospel tunes, with take-turn solo parts, at a moment’s notice. It’s like a nightmarish Burt Bacharach musical. The women even have some choreography--difficult on the sand--when they remember the joy they felt when they saw that trick horse and thought the war was over.

But the singing chorus of Trojan women is an unpredictable lot. To Hecuba they sing, We feel your anguish / We feel your pain. But when Andromache comes on, with her sorrows, they perform a whole song demanding, “What about us?” You can just imagine the chorus backstage: “Solos! We want solos!”

Mimi Seton’s songs, which might be perfectly pleasant on the radio, do not come off well in this context. They linger where they shouldn’t. When poor Andromache is mourning her beloved son, the eight-woman chorus lines up behind her, heads bowed. One keeps watching them, waiting for the outbreak of a new number. “So Long, Astyanax, So Long!” (It doesn’t come.) At times Arabian seems like a kid playing with toys, which can have its charm. It is, after all, fun to see that huge Jeep-like vehicle emerge from the lagoon. But his updating is hectic and more attention-getting than profound.

He announces his mark on the play at the start: A balletic sword fight between a Greek and a Trojan warrior ends with the Greek pulling out a gun. It continues through his adaptation, which is surprisingly unobtrusive even though it contains phrases like, “Yes! I am the man!” (That’s Menelaus entering.)

In a director’s note in the program, Arabian reminds us that Troy could be any Third World country invaded by a military power, and that we are like Greece, a militaristic power that is neglecting its “center culture.” That’s all fine, although I’m unclear as to what a center culture is. Finally, he says, this play shows us “the power of Woman.” This gave me pause. The Trojan women certainly have spiritual strength. But their choice is to commit suicide or get raped and enslaved. I’m unconvinced that this is power.

In his note, and in his direction, Arabian posits himself as the interpreter of a work the audience would otherwise be too thick to appreciate. The writing of Euripides survives many translations, centuries and two millennia. To understand his tale, we do not need “The Trojan Women: The Musical.” At best, this is a summer-night supplement to the real thing, not the thing itself.

* “The Trojan Women,” Theatre InSite, CBS Studio Center, 4024 Radford Ave., Studio City, Wednesday-Sunday, 8 p.m. Ends July 2. $25. (213) 466-1767. Running time: 2 hours.