Idomoneus’s ghostly chorus, strikingly costumed by Gillian Gallow, often seem to be suffering from collective PTSD.Cylla von Tiedemann
In a nice bit of coincidence, the same week that saw the opening at Theatre Passe Muraille of Michael Healey's The Drawer Boy also brought the premiere of Roland Schimmelpfennig's Idomeneus at Soulpepper. Both works deal with alternate histories and the power of storytelling, but where Healey couches his themes within a well-made play, Schimmelpfennig opts for a wild postmodern approach.
With Idomeneus, the German playwright takes the myth of the eponymous Cretan king and Trojan War general – a myth already known in several variations, including the Mozart opera Idomeneo – and picks apart its story further, pulling forth a tangle of contrasting narrative strands. In the process, he riffs on the horrors and absurdities of Greek tragedy, while swiftly transforming the solid structure of reliable plot into a confusing labyrinth of endless possibilities.
It's an unsettling, at times witty, at other times strangely moving experience, especially in the spectral, war-haunted production by Soulpepper's acting artistic director, Alan Dilworth.
The tales are told by a 10-member, modern-dress Greek chorus on a bleak grey set, their hair and rumpled clothes coated in fine dust like survivors of a bombing. They begin with a stirring account of Idomeneus's tragic voyage home to Crete after the fall of Troy, when a fierce storm blew up, sinking all but one of his 80 ships. Desperate to survive, the king promised the gods that, in return for fair weather, he'd sacrifice the first living thing he came upon when he got to shore. That turned out to be Idamantes, his son.
Yet, even as this story reaches a spectacularly gory climax, one chorus member (Frank Cox-O'Connell) keeps insisting that they've got it all wrong. And soon, others in the chorus are also piping up with alternate versions, other perspectives, other Greek myths that dovetail with Idomeneus's – and variations on those, too. Idomeneus himself (Stuart Hughes) is keen to rewrite his fate into a happy ending with his loving wife Meda (Michelle Monteith). At one point, a nasty Nauplius (Diego Matamoros), the ex-Argonaut determined to avenge his own son's death by systematically bedding the wives of all the Greek generals, even threatens to usurp the story.
Elektra (Courtney Ch'ng Lancaster) appears, too, debating whether she should run away with her lover, Idamantes (Jakob Ehman), or fulfill her destiny and slay her mother, Clytemnestra. And what about the stories of the forgotten women (Akosua Amo-Adem, Alana Bridgewater, Laura Condlln and Kyra Harper) left widowed by the drowning deaths of Idomeneus's anonymous soldiers? Or that of the angry fisherman (Cox-O'Connell), whose daughter was impregnated and abandoned by a wild-oat-sowing Idamantes?
Those who saw Tarragon Theatre's memorable production of his immigrant saga The Golden Dragon several seasons ago know Schimmelpfennig is a master at orchestrating this sort of narrative cacophony. Underlying it, however, is the back-to-basics formality of ancient drama, emphasized in Dilworth's staging. Although individual actors step out of the chorus, Thespis-style, to play different characters, they continue to speak of those characters in the third person. There is almost no dialogue.
There is, however, mimed action and sections of choreographed movement, as well as a final outburst of frenzied, free-form dancing to traditional Greek music.
Schimmelpfennig's text, translated into English by David Tushingham, is both colloquial and beautifully evocative; and while he has fun with the more fantastic elements of mythology (chimeras and the like), he's also attuned to the real wartime tragedies out of which these myths were spun.
Dilworth underscores that with his sombre production, in which the chorus, ghostly in Gillian Gallow's striking costumes, often appear to be suffering from collective PTSD. Lorenzo Savoini's raw decor is dominated by a vast, blank wall, riven by a solitary crack, and lit at various times by harsh fluorescent tubes. There are eerie flashes and bursts of static.
In its surreal reimagining of a Greek myth, Idomeneus proves a perfect companion piece to Soulpepper's 2015 production of Sarah Ruhl's Eurydice, which was also directed by Dilworth and starred Monteith and Hughes.
Speaking of which, the presence of those two actors in this production – Soulpepper's second in the wake of the Albert Schultz sex-abuse scandal – can't be ignored. Back in January, they were among the four company members who publicly cut their ties with Soulpepper and threw their support behind the actresses suing Schultz and the theatre. The fact that they've chosen to return for this show can be read as a sign of support for Dilworth and a new regime.
Idomeneus continues to March 24 (soulpepper.ca).