In the Name of the Gods

Annalee Jefferies renders Clytemnestra as a woman plagued by basic insecurities as much as a predisposition to slice and dice famous warriors. She manifests these qualities when blithely commenting to a visitor, "Decent people live here doing the best they can" -- and then disembowels a sheep and tosses its remains into a murky fire hole. In addition, Jefferies is supremely grounded as Andromache, a Trojan princess whose father, husband and seven children were felled by Achilles's sword. Brassy, no-nonsense and hardly in a mood to supplicate, she brazenly scoffs at her country's lecher-king, "You could not find the place where a thousand nymphs were singing?"

Englishman David Ryall delights as the Poet, a surrogate author of sorts (and a character who remains unmasked throughout) who begins the play by selling statues of Zeus and Aphrodite to a chorus of swimsuit-clad American women. With his twinkling eyes and self-deprecating humor, Ryall transports the chorus and audience to magical and mysterious locales. From time to time he impersonates characters such as the W.C. Fields-like Tyndareus, and, clad in a flap-eared hat and puffy-cheeked mask that appear to have been borrowed from Rocky and Bullwinkle, as Peleus, father of Achilles. As Odysseus, fellow Brit Alan Dobie is the epitome of unfeeling compromise, managing to shift alliances and adjust course without becoming overwhelmed by the despair and remorse that others ascribe to him. Through his portrait, we learn that the pitfalls of war by committee are no better or worse than the evils of stand-alone tyranny. Dobie's fiery confrontation with Mitchell's Hecuba and his recurring appearance as the prophet Calchas lend substance and subtlety to the saga without cloying it with sentiment.

New Yorker Alyssa Bresnahan sometimes appears to float an inch or two above the stage's sandy surface as the sea nymph Thetis, so seductive are her ephemeral appearances. In the space of a few short seconds, though, Bresnahan turns her godlike creature into a blithering brat who disavows any responsibility for having saddled her earthly son with a feral upbringing. She's similarly irrepressible as the prophetess Cassandra, urging her fellow women of Troy to revolt one minute and stand firm the next. "Had we not suffered, who would remember us?" is her ultimate refrain. As the oft-maligned Achilles (he's not much of a hero in this play), Robert Petkoff gets all of the warrior's coarseness and most of his blood lust. As Achilles's son, Neoptolemus, he is even more ruthless and cunning -- qualities that are underscored when he appears on stage bathed head to toe in his victims' blood.

Charged with the difficult task of inhabiting the stage for nearly the entire show, the chorus performs with admirable aplomb, especially during a horrific scene in which the Trojan Women are stripped naked and branded as slaves -- an episode that awakens memories of the atrocities in Bosnia and Chechnya. Later, the actresses represent several washerwomen during a fantastical, almost surreal vision of warfare that evokes the Holocaust. Selected as much for their collaborative synergies as for their individual talents, Francesca Carlin, Joy Jones, Tess Lina, Jeanne Paulsen, Christina Pawl, Nicole Poole, Juliet Smith, Mia Tagano, Vickie Tanner and Robin Terry consistently rise to the occasion --as do Elijah Alexander, Joshua Coomer, Pierre-Marc Diennet, Morgan Hallett, Steve Hughes, Tif Luckenbill, David McCann, Randy Moore and Matt Pepper, who together form the ensemble of soldiers and attendants. American dance master Donald McKayle's influence is evident only if you look for it; an extraordinary moment of unmasking occurs well into the story, and the two actors who carry it to its artful extremes were likely guided by McKayle's astute sensibilities.

The stories are enacted to both live and recorded music (composed and performed by Irishman Mick Sands, assisted by on-stage musician Yukio Tsuji) and on a large, sandy playing area littered with seaside flotsam. The actors are clothed in a mixture of modern and classic garb -- baseball-style shin guards, Vulcan-like helmets and platform shoes mix with flowing gowns, breastplates and loincloths. The emblematic stage design, which varies for each of the nine plays, serves as a constant reminder of each myth's size and scale: A giant skewered stag, inverted on a giant spear and arching toward the heavens at, it seems, the precise moment of death, dominates center stage during the tale of the sacrifice of Iphigenia. (Greek theater legend Dionysis Fotopoulos designed the magnificent sets and costumes.) Throughout, iridescent shafts of color blanket and pattern the stage even as they isolate this or that performer in mystical "god light." (Japanese designer Sumio Yoshii fashioned the stunning lighting.)