Review: The Trojan Women at the University of Texas [theater]

Choices like these—tonal shifts that attempt to frame the tragedy in a racy, fiercely contemporary idiom—are the production's biggest misstep. And they occur again and again—the gods Athena (Xochitl Romero) and Poseidon (Keenan Zarling) alternately speak in heightened prose and toss off casual "go fuck yourself"s, which makes finding consistency a challenge. In Euripedes, especially, the gods are revealed to be petty, so it's a fair interpretation, but it's also confusing: If the playwrights' goal was to cut the bullshit from the classics (generally a noble goal), why keep the "I beg of you, uncle!"-style pleading?

This disjointed tone is at its most egregious as Menelaus arrives to survey the damage his army has done to Troy. Richardson portrays him as a cocky villain, clicking his heels and self-impressed by how effectively he leveled the city. It's a jarring interpretation, but a valid one—at least initially. As Verity Branco's Helen—the woman for whom the 10 year war has been fought—arrives on the scene, clad in a feathery satin robe and red satin gloves, smoking a cigarette in a long holder, the cartoonishness of the play gets out of hand, and the human emotions we were invited to feel on behalf of the women are dismissed. In fact, upon Menelaus' arrival, the play stops being about the women at all—it's his show, and they're just characters in it, playing a role in his decision regarding Helen and providing something for him to think about on his long boat ride home.

What we're left with after the change in tone is a strangely exaggerated cartoon, with Scheming, Sneering Whore Helen and Led-By-His-Dick Menelaus dominating the stage. There's a mock trial of Helen that we have no ability to care about—what does it matter what happens to either of them when they're both clearly not based on anything resembling a real person? Not coincidentally, this is also when Kays goes into full-blown experimentation mode. A stadium-style scoreboard lying in the rubble comes to life during the trial; a TV we'd assumed was a prop turns on at Helen's command, offering exculpatory evidence; Hecuba grabs a microphone and busts out a rock song about how much she hates Helen. In the end, the face that launched a thousand ships is exonerated, but we're left mostly to believe that her innocence was determined by how much weird shit happened in the trial.

And all of this is so frustrating because there's a sensitivity throughout the first half of the performance that could have easily been extended to Helen and Menelaus. An earlier scene in which an outstanding Lesley Gurule as Andromache mourns the loss of her child demonstrates that Kays is fully capable of giving us moments that connect on an emotional level. And Menelaus and Helen—both facing down the enormity of what's become of their relationship—have the potential to earn our empathy as well. It's disappointing to see that potential dismissed casually, in favor of such facile interpretations that it becomes hard to even care about Hecuba and her fellow Trojans anymore.

Ultimately, The Trojan Women is all over the place, and that's unsatisfying for a play that possesses such a simple power. If it's at its most effective when it displays the unadorned grief of the women of Troy, then there's just no need to dazzle us with scoreboards and TVs and rock songs and Helen flashing her underwear at Menelaus. It's hard to fault Kays for experimenting in student work, but it's also fair to hope that some of the chances she'll take will involve exercising restraint.