Disparate elements harmonize in ‘War Music’
By: Janos Gereben
Special to The Examiner
March 30, 2009
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| Dramatic performance: Sea nymph Thetis (René Augesen) comforts her son, the Greek hero Achilles (Jud Williford), in ACT’s production of “War Music.” (Courtesy) |
SAN FRANCISCO — Lillian Groag has worked in collaboration with American Conservatory Theater artists for a year and half to bring to the stage the world premiere of “War Music,” which is being touted as a “groundbreaking fusion of language, music and movement.”
Opening this week in San Francisco, the show is infused with history. The story is from Homer’s 2,800-year-old “Iliad,” about the Achilles-Agamemnon clash in the Trojan Wars.
The most current English translation of the classic, used for “War Music,” is by Christopher Logue, who has put 45 years into the project.
Groag — who has specialized in adopting and directing large-scale dramas, such “Menocchio,” “Blood Wedding” and “A Triumph of Love” — says the play opens in the the 10th year of the Trojan War.
Achilles, the great young hero, gets into a conflict with the commander in chief, Agamemnon, and withdraws from battle, triggering the events that are the subject matter of Homer’s “Iliad.”
What attracted Groag to the subject?
“What Charles Isherwood calls ‘the eerie power of the words,’ the tremendous sense of humor throughout what one might think couldn’t possibly be funny,” she says. “Logue, the translator, infuses the text with the ‘pow’ of the poetry, which never loses size even when updated to our own figures of speech.
“And finally, its scope. I like to work on complex pieces, which, due to their wide and all-encompassing horizon, best represent life to me.”
“Above all, I like to see in the theater the profound mixture of tragedy and comedy that seems to best describe the trials and tribulations of human existence.”
Groag’s work spans theater and opera. She is creating “War Music” with choreographer Daniel Pelzig (who set the movement in the Metropolitan Opera’s Mary Zimmerman production of “Lucia di Lammermoor”) and Bay Area composer John Glover.
Glover says the show’s music spans “a wide range of styles and sounds, much in the way that Logue’s text does. Some of the works are heightened ‘classically’ composed pieces while others are referencing Turkish court music, 1930s vaudeville and Haitian voodoo chanting.”
ACT Artistic Director Carey Perloff draws a parallel between Groag’s play and America’s predicament.
“As a country engaged in several wars of attrition simultaneously, we are desperate to understand how we got into the mess we are in,” she says. “‘War Music’ is the perfect catalyst for conversation on these difficult questions and promises to be bold, ambitious and unforgettable.”
The cast includes René Augesen, Anthony Fusco, Gregory Wallace, Jud Williford, Jack Willis, Charles Dean, Lee Ernst, Sharon Lockwood, David A. Moss and Andy Murray.
Also participating are ACT Master of Fine Arts program class of 2009 members Nicholas Pelczar, Christopher S. Tocco and Erin Michelle Washington.
Daniel Ostling is responsible for the scenic design, Beaver Bauer for the costumes and Russell H. Champa for lighting design.
If You Go
War Music
Where: American Conservatory Theater, 415 Geary St., San Francisco
When: 8 p.m. most Tuesdays-Fridays; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays and April 8 and 15; closes April 26
Tickets: $14 to $82
Contact: (415) 749-2228, www.act-sf.org
