Two plays that plead for peace

Of his monumental opus, History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides declares: "My work is not a piece to meet the taste of an immediate public but was done to last for ever."

The same claim might be made by his contemporaries, Euripides and Aristophanes of their respective works for the theater. In his tragedy, The Trojan Women, Euripides condemns war in no uncertain terms as an unmitigated evil. In Lysistrata, the comic playwright, Aristophanes, proposes a feminist solution to end the conflict between Athens and its Delian League, and Sparta and its Peloponnesian League.

By chance or as the Fates would have it, these two anti-war dramas were staged lately at about the same time as America commemorated the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington D.C. Tanghalang Pilipino raised the curtain on Troyanas (in two versions, Pilipino and English) at the CCP Little Theater as Dulaang UP unveiled its production of Lysistrata (also in two versions) at the Wilfrido Ma. Guerrero Theatre in UP Diliman.

The background of The Trojan Women is known to students of mythology. A grand wedding feast, a goddess who sows discord when she receives no invitation, the golden apple she throws into the banquet hall, the three goddesses who claim it, the bribes they offer the judge, the choice of Paris, the promise to him of the goddess of love – the world’s most beautiful woman, Helen, wife of Menelaus, the flight of the lovers to Troy, the pursuit of the betrayed husband along with a thousand ships and the great Greek heroes who champion his cause, the ten-year siege of the walled city of Troy, the fall of thousands on both camps in the battlefield hurled into Hades still in the prime of manhood, a trick to penetrate the walls of the city, the wooden horse, the final assault, the massacre of all the Trojan men including King Priam, putting the city to the torch in a single night amidst the wailing of women and the cries of children.

Here opens Euripides’ elegiac lament, ironically his sympathy not on the side of the Greeks who are shown to be the oppressors. The chorus – widows, orphans, sisters, mothers, and among them, their queen, Hekabe – bewails the fate of their homeland and the loss of their loved ones.

The play begins on this fateful dawn when no sunrise is seen, the sky being still shrouded in smoke from the conflagration. The choragus leads the women in a dirge, then turns to Hekabe (Madeleine Nicolas) in lamentation. One by one the captive victims are paraded: Hekabe’s daughter, the mad prophetess, Kasandra (Diana Malahay), intended as prize of war to the commander-in-chief of the Greek forces, Agamemnon; Polyxena (Sigrid Bernardo) doomed to be slain at the grave of Achilles; Andromache (Shamaine Centenera-Buencamino), widow of the valiant Hektor, and her little boy, Astyanax (John Zyke Galoso), intended to be thrown from the walls to the rocks below, an offering by the victors to the gods for a safe voyage home and to prevent the son from growing up to avenge his father; and Helene (Kalila Aguilos) whose fate is still to be decided, but ultimately Menelaos (Rolando Inocencio) spares her life. As for Hekabe, she is given to the destroyer of her city, Odysseus.

No doubt, Director Jose Estrella, a top-notch artistic and technical staff and the cast worked very hard to make this production click. If the outcome was less than the sum of its parts, it must have been the interpolation of materials in addition to Euripides. The use of fatigue uniforms and rifles by the Greek warriors and the sound of helicopter gunships in the Trojan War might be justified to project the timelessness of the theme. But to have the chorus of captives seductively baring their bodies and to make the dignified and grieving Andromache confess her sexual fantasy with the use of a dildo could not have come from the quill of Euripides but from some other source with prurient interests or with designs that issue from common cupidity.

Histrionics and hysteria are not in accord with the Greek classic tradition, in which moderation and restraint are prized principles. What is excessive turns out to be next to nothing and what is less may be simply enough.

In counterpoint to TP’s The Trojan Women was Dulaang UP’s Lysistrata which applied the comic Muse to express the plea for peace. As the war between Athens and Sparta rages, an Athenian woman, Lysistrata, (Missy Maramara/Margo Borgoña) summons the women to the Acropolis for a meeting. She has a plan to use the power of women to put an end to the war. The women should deny their men the pleasures of the nuptial bed if they insist on going to the battlefield. The women of Boeotia, Corinth and other city states including Sparta are persuaded that her scheme might work. Despite certain complications, the women finally convince their husbands that it’s far better to make love than to make war.

Aristophanes’ comedic arsenal includes satire, comic irony, verbal abuse, phallic and yonic symbols, sexual self-gratification–all in tribute to Priapus, the god of male sexuality, the target of his comic cannons.

The cast delivered a highly creditable performance under the tasteful direction of Amiel Leonardia. Tuxqs Rutaquio also deserves special mention for his scenic design of parts of the facades of the Parthenon and the Erechtheum with its caryatids.

The Peloponnesian War ended with only a Pyrrhic victory for the Spartans. Not long after, Athens and Sparta and their respective allies were conquered by Macedonia.

Euripides prayed for peace, as we all do today in an uncertain world that is still under the threat of bayonets and bombs:

Peace, deep and rich,of gods immortal the fairest,

I yearn for you: so long you tarry!

…I see your grace and your beauty and lovely dances

and songs and garlanded merry-makers.

Come, lady Peace. Come to our city;

ward hateful contention from our dwellings,

and bitter strife whose pleasure is the sharp sword.

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For comments, write to jessqcruz@hotmail.com.