Review: Humanity's Heartbreak Revealed at OTW's Tragic WOMEN OF TROY

In a play more than 2000 years old written by Euripides titled The Trojan Women, Dale Gutzman's Off the Wall Theater (OTW) reimagines their version, Women of Troy, set in the 1920's. Gutzman worked several years to adapt the play inspired by a Don Taylor translation revealing the aftermath of the infamous Trojan War through a women's eyes, the prisoners and refugees shipped to another city. These were the women who survived when their brothers, fathers, husbands and sons were slaughtered by the Athenians after the legendary Trojan horse "birthed blood" that flowed into Troy's streets.

The results of the so called war horse "birth" present a 'cri de coeur', passionate pleas for reason n contemporary culture and the future---whether in a nearby neighborhood or across the globe. Gutzman, who also directed the production, trimmed the play to approximately 85, no intermission minutes, with a deference to spoken language rather than pure poetry, although the language speaks lyrically at times. The results uncover the unedited tragedy of war where romanticizing a man's death or heroics remains completely inconsequential. This premise underscores the immense toll any war releases on the future, the land, and the people who live there. Women and innocent children usually bear the brunt on what remains after the blood shed. When the Athenians burn Troy to the ground, absolutely nothing remains excepts ashes and smoke from a viable, human civilization that fellow humans decided to destroy.

Audiences definitively need to expose themselves to OTW's drama, confront these stark realities because the events become truths when war rages anywhere--in homes, city streets, countries near and far or across the globe. The once ruler of Troy Queen Hecuba (a painfully drawn, moving and emotionally wrought Marilyn White), mourns her family's destruction. Her remaining daughter Cassandra then stripped from her arms to become an enemy King's concubine. Alicia Rice carries the virgin Cassandra's madness and then reality of her circumstance through proud conviction and prophecies.

Perhaps only a woman who had carried and borne a child after nine long months shares the appalling, agonizing grief when Andromache realizes her infant son will be killed out of a man's fear, and as the play states, cowardice, again ripped from an arm's cradle. Laura Monagle's excruciating emotional pain arrives on stage in another cri de coeur. A cry for reason amid the madness of war, a man's passion to punish survivors whether war torn immigrants or refuges when leaders subjugate their inherent humanity because of why? Why is the urge to subjugate stronger than the urge to elevate another human being, man or woman, to help them survive their devastation?

Even the regal Helen of Troy, a seductive and tantalizing Zoe Schwartz, remains a question mark in this production. While Greeks fought the war for her beauty and a husband's supposed honor, what realistic choices did she have? Was she to sacrifice herself for an untrustworthy Paris? Did her husband Menelaus come to her defense and rescue her when first stolen, the almost two faced persona played by James Strange. Women all over the world have been subjected to a man's rule and will, and need they destroy themselves to prove their worth? Perhaps living on, as Queen Esther did with her King when she single handedly saved the Jewish nation told in the Bible's Old Testament could prove transforming the future might be more fulfilling. Women have the power to change the future in these situations when they could survive. What is the underlying story from Helen's perspective?

The men in Gutzman's Women of Troy appear to play merely pawns, and include actors Randall T. Anderson as Talthybius, two soldiers, and Menelaus, to the surviving women's personas and their now commander's inhuman orders. David Roper's technical direction and Lawrence J. Lukesavage's special effects recreate the horrifying burning of Troy, and the decadence and riches of the 20's, where the women wear black evening gowns, dripping with jewels, accruements of their happier life, that all become plunder for the Athenians.

The heart cries, silent in the audience, and more audibly after the performance, when watching OTW's Women of Troy. I perceive the women left behind in wars, however grand or infinitesimal in their social status, struggle and suffer more, because they often live when their men die. At the crux of men's wars where the dead may lie in peace, while their abject wills with the consequences persist for centuries. Perhaps Gutzman's concise and pared tragedy plays as an evening revealing the unfathomable truth to what humans plan and do to each other in the name of power and pride. Substitute Women of Troy for Women of Armenia, Women of Iraq, Women of Syria. When will this end? The future is now.

Off the Wall Theater presents Dale Gutzman's adaptation of WOMEN OF TROY adapted from Euripides through February 25. The next production THE FANTASTICKS opens April 20. For information or tickets, please call: 414.484.8874 or visit www.offthewalltheatre.com

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