Review: PENTHESILEA: THE WOMAN WHO KILLED ACHILLES

Greek and Roman comedies and dramas were performed in outdoor arenas. It's only fair that modern retellings of them should be outdoors as well. Local playwright Tyler Joseph Rossi brings us back to the Trojan War on the fields of Rock Ford Plantation in Lancaster. Directed by Jeremiah Miller, the show is a joint production of Lancaster's Theater of the Seventh Sister and Orpheus Theatre Project.

Most of the Trojan War here is as you remember it. Helen, presumably the world's most beautiful woman, married Paris, favorite of Aphrodite and brother of the great Trojan warrior Hector; her face launched the proverbial thousand Greek ships against Troy. Greek demigod Achilles has killed Hector, though he's not rejoicing because his lover, Patroclus, has also been killed. The female Amazon warriors have thrown themselves into the ring on the side of Troy. Their queen, Penthesilea, has been ordered by the god Ares to kill Achilles. The prophetess Cassandra (played here brilliantly by Katherine Campbell Rossi) is uttering truths to the Trojans that they refuse to accept.

One thing she prophesies is that Penthesilea (an excellent Benny Benamanti, last seen at Open Stage of Harrisburg) will indeed slay Achilles - not a part of the traditional mythology- which she does, though not before a first scrimmage in which the goddess Athena pulls Achilles from the fight to protect him. There's much war, and more Greeks for Penthesilea to slay before that occurs.

Meanwhile, King Priam oversees a dysfunctional royal family that is nearly as dysfunctional as the Olympian one. Making the point, John Rohrkemper and Cynthia Charles play both Priam and Hecuba as well as Zeus and Hera. Neither humans nor gods have particularly good control over difficult adult children.

By the time Penthesilea encounters Achilles (Sam Shea) again and manages to strike him in his one mortal body part, Priam's family and Troy as a whole are in decline despite her best efforts. Achilles, whether in truth or because he wants another fighting round with the Amazon queen, persuades the gods to give him life again because he's suddenly allegedly in love with her. This is perhaps the most jarring note in the play, as Achilles has spent most of his free time threatening to kill any other Greek daring to mention his dead lover's name with their profane tongues. The gods can't fail to have noticed, as the audience certainly did.

The battle scenes, though staged on a small scale, are well choreographed, as are the large number of individual fights. One of the last, of course, is the third clash of the Greek demigod and the Amazon.

The cast is almost uniformly excellent, though the real praise must go to Rossi and Benamanti for their carrying the show as the thought-mad oracle and the staunch Amazon, two women whose place never should have been in collapsing Troy.

Well performed and nicely directed, with no slack time in its 90 minutes. If the script were tuned slightly tighter, another production of a longer run would be gratifying.

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