'Trojan Women' is a Greek tragedy a la MTV

The emotional range and intensity of this production is extraordinary. Tragedy, melodrama, satire, farce and musical comedy all have their moments in "The Trojan Women," playing at Theater Schmeater.

THEATER REVIEW

THE TROJAN WOMEN

PLAYWRIGHT: Charles Mee, based on the 415 B.C. tragedy by Euripides

WHERE: Theater Schmeater, 1500 Summit Ave.

WHEN: Through Nov. 2

TICKETS: $12-$15, under 18 free (but not recommended for those under 17 owing to sex and violence)

The show is troubling and funny, remote and immediate, disgusting and engaging. The cast of 14 is uniformly impressive. The actors, under the direction of Sheila Daniels, negotiate emotional curves and swerves, U-turns, right turns and dead-ends.

Playwright Charles Mee, whose comedies "Big Love" and "Winter Time" have been produced at ACT Theatre, is brilliant but not at all tidy. "The Trojan Women" is based on an ancient Greek tragedy. It is also based on MTV, Broadway, tell-all talk shows and TV soaps.

The setting is the ruins of Troy. After nine years of fighting, the Greeks have defeated the Trojans. Eight battered women await their fate. Their atrocity stories are all but unbearable. There is no sense of 1200 B.C. being way long ago. The tales could be modern reports from Afghanistan or Kurdistan, El Salvador or Rwanda, Palestine or Cambodia.

The agonizing suddenly stops. Music blares and the Trojan women are the Shirelles singing, "Mama said there'd be days like this . . . "

When spoken dialogue resumes, it seems as if the women are about to conclude that men are beasts and women are innocent victims and that Greeks are barbarians and Trojans are aggrieved gentlefolk. But then we see women goad and manipulate men in ways that have nothing to do with innocence or nobility.

And we hear how the war started (according to Greek mythology). Paris, a Trojan, came to visit his Greek friend Menelaus. Paris absconded to Troy with Menelaus' wife, the beautiful Helen. The Trojans, spurning Greek appeals to chivalry, urged Paris to keep Helen. That meant war.

MJ Sieber, as Menelaus, roars onto the stage dripping with gore and shouting for vengeance. Then, suddenly, he is the heart-broken Tom Jones, singing "Why, oh why, Delilah . . . ?" Megan Hill, as the Trojan princess Polyxena, comes on as a pure, innocent sacrificial offering. Then she is a Britney Spears clone with fierce MTV ambitions singing, "Tell me how you want it to be . . . "

Audrey Freudenberg, as the aristocrat Andromache, seems at first to be a harmless, coddled country club lady. But the more she talks the more clear it becomes that she is self-obsessed -- even though she doesn't have much of a self to speak of.

RC Jennings and Lyam White, as Greek soldiers, seem at first to be monsters of violence and cruelty. Then they are hapless, abused grunts. Then they are hopped up goofballs, apparently telling their troubles to a contemptuous/sympathetic Ricki Lake.

Adhering most closely to the norms of classical tragedy is Marty Mukhalian as the Trojan queen Hecuba. Mukhalian keeps her laments and tirades full of feeling. As the atrocities mount up, however, she becomes as vengeance-driven as the most war-crazed women of Zagreb.

At her urging, her son Aeneas, played by Ray Tagavilla, vows to destroy Greece. According to legend, Aeneas went off with some Trojan survivors and founded Rome. And the Roman Empire did indeed engulf and enslave Greece. Unlike the splendid hero of Virgil's "The Aeniad," Tagavilla's Aeneas is clearly psychotic, a prototype of your Hitlers and your Pol Pots.

As for Helen, played by Heather Guiles, she is a sleek slut right out of a Victoria's Secret catalog. When she gets Menelaus calmed down and then riled up, they are a total sleaze-o couple, singing songs from the cynical and satirical musical "Chicago."

Sometimes director Daniels, who assembled an ensemble of strong singers, actually achieves effects that at first seem ironic and then dissolve into a disturbing sort of pathos. Aristotle said the theater was for strong emotions and sharp insights. And so it is with this "Trojan Women."

P-I theater critic Joe Adcock can be reached at 206-448-8369 or joeadcock@seattlepi.com

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