An Iliad

"The true hero, the true subject, the center of the Iliad is force." Written to the echoes of Wehrmacht guns over the fields of France, Simone Weil's interpretation of Europe's first great work of literature would be easy to dismiss as a reflection of its context if not for the fact that it is undoubtedly true. This deep understanding of the Iliad amply informs An Iliad, a dazzling, must-see production on for only a few weeks at the New York Theatre Workshop. The tale is presented in a way that would not have been wholly unfamiliar to the Greeks, by a solitary bard who is both storyteller and actor --- Denis O'Hare for half the dates, Stephen Spinella for the rest.

Taken, as so many were, with his performance as the Vampire King of Mississippi, we went with O'Hare, who inhabits Homer's text like he was born for no other end. He storms, he rages, he laughs, he sings, and he sobs, wrestling with the horrible attraction of violence in its myriad forms, from the banal to the world-historic. (His climactic recitation of wars and conflicts is one of the most emotionally draining bits of theater we've ever seen.) There is scenery-chewing aplenty, all of it affecting, all of it necessary, but the play's masterstrokes come in its quiet, casual moments, when O'Hare gives us a poet who is merely a man, unwilling to live without force yet unable to bear its consequences. Listing the endless dead of the Trojan War, he waves his hand and looks away. "These names mean nothing to you," he says, "but I knew those boys."