tom gallagher

Every school child learns how military hardware has changed over the three thousand years since the Greeks besieged Troy - sword, shield, and spear to gun, tank and bomb. We spend relatively little time, though, asking how people's attitudes toward their wars and enemies have changed - if they have changed. The Stanford Repertory Theater's Euripides double bill (performed recently in Palo Alto, California and upcoming in Athens, Greece) offers an all too rare historical perspective on war's human "software." Has humanity progressed over the three millennia from Troy to Afghanistan? The evening suggests anything but an unqualified "yes."

Performances of these two plays - Helen and Hecuba - are quite rare, even in comparison to other plays of ancient Athens. Nonetheless, one thing you soon realize upon entering into their world is that some aspects of the Trojan War actually seem more realistic these days than they used to. Back in the twentieth century, that ancient war's supposed ten-year duration seemed distinctly unreal. In the seventeenth year of our Afghanistan War, however, the Trojan War's extreme length has lost its mythic aura, so the plays' characters and action may now seem somewhat less remote. Another factor often distancing modern audiences from Greek tragedies - their stark brevity - is also eased by pairing the two plays. They can go by so fast - the line it is drawn; the curse it is cast; and in under an hour it's over - that some contemporary theater goers might be still settling into their seats when it's time to go. The post-intermission reimmersion into antiquity is quite helpful allowing us moderns to take in the time change.