[NEohioPAL] Review of "An Iliad" at Cleveland Play House

[Bob Abelman]

 ‘An Iliad’ at Cleveland Play House takes us on a theatrical odyssey 



Bob Abelman

Cleveland Jewish News, The News Herald, The Morning Journal



In “An Iliad” – an OBIE and Lortel Award-winning play conceived not long after the United States invaded Iraq and produced off-Broadway in 2012 – playwrights Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare offer a compressed, contemporized and intensely compelling take on Homer’s nearly 3000-year-old epic poem “The Iliad.” 



The 100-minute, one-act play draws on Robert Fagles’ accessible translation of the original work.  It is made even more accessible by the highly theatrical, direct-address storytelling performed by a single actor portraying a veteran chronicler of the decade-long Trojan War and a single on-stage musician on double bass.  



Together, The Poet and his musical muse weave tales of domination and destruction – the defiance that drives Achilles, the killing of his best friend Patroclus, the conflicts that hound Hector, and Priam's journey to beg for the body of his son, among them – and bring 54 characters, mostly male, to life.  And death.



Devout wives grieving the loss of husbands, heartbroken mothers lamenting the death of sons, powerless sex slaves and woefully misguided goddesses.  These are the women who reside in the periphery of the Homer’s classic story.



And, in this Cleveland Play House incarnation, the story is told by women. 



For more of this article, go to www.clevelandjewishnews.com/columnists/bob_abelman/
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