Same tale, but a new context

IN 1993, Aeschylus’ 2,500-year-old play “The Persians” rattled the precincts of the Mark Taper Forum. As staged by Peter Sellars in the wake of the Persian Gulf War, Robert Auletta’s adaptation of the drama about the defeat of the title people by the Greeks turned the latter into Americans and the former into Iraqis.

But many observers felt “The Persians” leaned too far -- or at least too ham-handedly -- toward the viewpoint of the Persians/Iraqis. Auletta remembers angry theatergoers walking out.

Subsequently, more than a decade passed with no revivals of Auletta’s adaptation. This summer, though -- more than two years after the larger American invasion of Iraq -- the script has returned to life in a staging by Robert McNamara (not the star of “Fog of War”) in Washington, D.C. Produced by the Scena Theatre, it’s being performed not far from where the current war effort is being directed.

Auletta didn’t change the text. But “the play has changed in people’s minds,” he says. Since Sept. 11, 2001, “we can see ourselves on the receiving end. We know it can happen to us too. The metaphor is deeper. The Persians became the Americans” as well as the Iraqis.

Auletta says that while he thought Sellars’ Taper staging was “great, scary and moving,” he felt that some of the words were lost because of “a heavy sound score.” The dialogue is easier to hear in Washington, he says.

But the adapter doubts that any administration policymakers will check out the production, despite its proximity. “They’re so noninterested in culture.”

Don Shirley