Perhaps no classical Greek playwright invites updating more readily than Euripides. In his plays the grandeur of archaic myth collides with the sordid, often hypocritical politics of democratic Athens, producing an irony that feels subversive and playful in a particularly modern way. Like all good postmodernists, Euripides provides multiple points of view, and this polytonality has led today’s critics to label him a humanist, pacifist feminist, rationalist, irrationalist, and nihilist.
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It’s no surprise, then, that Euripides is a favorite of auteur directors like JoAnne Akalaitis, whose Iphigenia Cycle played at the Court Theatre seven years ago. She appeared to be throwing anything she wanted onstage–the hipper and more incongruous the better–as though she were embracing the playwright’s ironic spirit rather than trampling it underfoot. In Iphegenia in Kingman Chicago playwright Eric Appleton (who spends his days as technical director and scenic designer at Niles North High School) likewise modernizes the myth with a bewildering incongruity: it’s the mid-50s and the princess Iphegenia–whose father, Agamemnon, believes he must sacrifice her to the gods–has miraculously escaped to a diner in Kingman, Arizona. This quirky premise is not an Akalaitian ego trip, however, but a fitting Euripidean conceit. Like his ancient counterpart, Appleton reimagines the myth to address the concerns of his own generation.
But the real power of Appleton’s play comes from its tantalizing indeterminacy. At first glance, it seems he wants us to swallow his far-fetched premise whole, accepting that these are heroic figures gulping coffee and burgers. He even makes them speak in verse–pentameter, no less–using highly elevated diction. But a careful reading of the script reveals another, wholly nonmythic story. Sometimes Appleton suggests that Agamemnon was no Argive king but a midwestern farmer defeated by the Oklahoma dust bowl; he went mad and believed God was telling him that killing his daughter would bring rain. To survive, Iphegenia needed no divine intervention but simply ran away, hitching rides until she ended up in Kingman. And Orestes isn’t hounded by the Furies but is suffering a psychotic break as the result of post-traumatic stress disorder. Then again, how can any of this be true? How many Oklahoma farmers speak in pentameter?
When: Through 10/30: Fri 8 PM, Sat 5 and 8 PM, Sun 5 PM
