Big, Bold ‘Women of Troy’ at UC Irvine

If a play lasts a year on the boards, it is not just an exception to the rule but--astronomically expensive Broadway shows notwithstanding--a certifiable hit. “The Women of Troy,” being revived at UC Irvine through Sunday, has been playing the worldwide theatrical circuit off and on for more than two millennia.

Scholars say it premiered in ancient Athens, some 415 years before the birth of Christ, at the Great Dionysia, the Broadway of its time, an annual spring festival for the god Dionysus beneath the Acropolis. So there’s no question that Euripides’ tragedy, set in the immediate aftermath of the Trojan War, is a proven smash.

Doubtless, too, the playwright would be pleased to hear that the UCI drama department is giving his work an impressive physical production. The show looks like a million bucks. The setting has all the size and grandeur you might expect from a piece originally intended as mass entertainment. Historians say “The Women of Troy,” like other festival productions, played before an audience of as many as 15,000.

The crowd at UCI’s Fine Arts Concert Hall was not that large, of course, probably in the neighborhood of 150 on opening night. Nor did it have the social breadth to which Euripides was accustomed. In his day, first-nighters were the cream of Athenian society as well as the city’s hoi polloi and out-of-town farmers on holiday. At UCI, the usual suspects turned up: dedicated theatergoers, students, teachers, friends and/or relatives of the cast and company.

Director Dudley Knight and his team of designers were ready for us and the masses. Their production is nothing if not stentorian.

Set against the steep, towering, rust-colored walls of defeated Troy, the drama takes on the quality of a gargantuan sculpture. The gods Poseidon and Athena come alive, huge and hallucinatory, through astral video projections. The walls of Troy split open to reveal a glimpse of Mediterranean sky and sea.

Dwarfed by the immensity of their surroundings and their fate, the Trojan women wait to be distributed as war booty among the victorious Greeks, who have slaughtered their husbands, fathers and sons, and are preparing to demolish Troy once and for all.

Every high schooler the least bit familiar with Homer’s “Iliad” knows the epic tale of the Trojan War: how Paris, the son of Troy’s Queen Hecuba, seduced Helen of Sparta, the world’s most beautiful woman, and stole her from her husband, Menelaus; how Menelaus and his brother Agamemnon assembled an army of warriors from various Greek cities and sailed for Troy to retrieve Helen; how, after 10 long years of laying siege to the city, they used a ruse, the wooden Trojan horse, to get inside Troy’s impregnable walls; how the wrathful Achilles, fiercest of the Greek warriors, defeated Hector, Troy’s noblest and bravest prince, the son of Hecuba and Priam, killing him in single combat.

Those who don’t know the background have nothing to worry about. Kenneth McLeish, whose translation of “The Women of Troy” is being introduced with this production, provides lucid background notes in the program.

The three central figures of the tragedy--Hecuba, her daughter Cassandra and Hector’s widow, Andromache--are ably played.

Hecuba (Beth Robbins) is a staunch heroine, grief-stricken but defiant. She looks a bit young to be old Priam’s widow and the mother of two other grown sons killed by the Greeks, but never mind. Robbins cuts a stalwart figure, staff in hand, very much a queen bearing witness to her losses and that of Troy with eloquent, if declamatory, passion.

As the crazed Cassandra, Susanna Morrow gives an athletic performance full of acrobatic agility. She literally climbs the walls in her visionary madness and turns at times into a whirling dervish.

As Andromache, perched atop a cart of household goods with young son Astyanax and about to be hauled off as chattel, Stephanie Burden conveys the requisite sorrow of a woman in mourning.

Tangi Miller manages the thankless role of Helen with enough aplomb to persuade us that even if she’s not the Catherine Deneuve of ancient Greece, her advance billing as the face that launched a thousand ships has some credibility.

As for the McLeish translation, it’s hard to tell from a single hearing just how good it is. But it sounded fluent and, except for one giggle-provoking line about Helen having put on weight during her stay in Troy, seemed wholly satisfactory.

* “The Women of Troy,” UC Irvine Fine Arts Concert Hall, off Bridge Road on the UC Irvine campus. Wednesday-Saturday at 8 p.m. with a Saturday matinee at 2. Ends Saturday. $12-15; $6 for students. (714) 824-2787. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes; no intermission.

Michelle Brooks: Chorus

Stephanie Burden: Andromache

Cindy Caddel: Chorus

Mirla Criste: Chorus leader

Todd Denning: Menelaus

Keith Fowler: Poseidon

David Gallo: Soldier

Amy Christine Gran: Chorus

Jason Hancock: Soldier

Mark Jocson: Soldier

Damon Kupper: Soldier

Charlotte Lopez: Chorus

Tangi Miller: Helen

Alan Mingo: Talthybius

Susanna Morrow: Cassandra

Andrea Odinov: Athena/Chorus

Jonathan Parlow: Soldier

Beth Robbins: Hecuba

Jared Statten: Astyanax (Friday, Saturday)

Andrea Sondreal: Chorus

Beverly Sotelo: Chorus

Evan Weiner: Astyanax (Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday)

A Drama at UCI production of a play by Euripides, translated by Kenneth McLeish, directed by Dudley Knight. Scenic design: Snezana Petrovic. Costume design: Madeline Ann Kozlowski. Lighting design: Ben Tusher. Composer: Alan Terricciano. Choreographer: Annie Loui. Vocal coach: Joan Melton. Stage Manager: Veronica Horton.