'An Iliad' — A Classic Reborn

By Lee Juillerat for the Rogue Valley Times Feb 26, 2023

“An Iliad,” the Rogue Theater Company’s new offering, is a gripping, powerful rendering of Homer’s epic poem about the Trojan War. The powerful production merges historic issues with contemporary times. “Iliad” resonates because the story of mankind’s seemingly never-satiated lust for power continues in present day war-torn Ukraine.

The staging at the intimate Grizzly Peak Winery indoor theater is intentionally sparse, but the set comes alive through the words, movements and expressions of John Tufts as “The Poet” in this one-person performance.

A grizzled veteran of too many wars, the Poet is a traveling Gypsy who for generations has walked the earth telling his story. Equipped only with a battered suitcase and fortified by sips from his coddling bottle of vodka, the Poet struggles with how to tell his story, one he’s told too often. As he wearily admits, “Every time I sing this song, I hope it’s the last time.”

For 100 minutes Tufts, who for 14 years was with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, creates and projects multiple dueling personalities, including Agamemnon, Achilles, Patroclus, Hector and Paris. He shifts from character to character, exposing their vanities and personas through their individual musings and often bitter exchanges. It’s a virtuosic performance, with Tufts inhabiting more than a dozen characters.

It’s an emotional, focused and physical performance that, at times, is exhausting to watch. Through words and carefully choreographed actions, Tufts creates a world of flying spears, pierced and bloodied bodies, and the violence of clashing swords. As he tells the story with dialogue and emotion, Tufts drips with sweat. He is the Poet.

The grief created during the Trojan War — the violence and countless lives lost — is shown as something ongoing, with the Poet reciting the ongoing litany of wars, which gives tragic immediacy and meaning to wars now being fought and, likely, in the future.

The intensity of the play, an adaption Homer’s classic by Denis O’Hare and Lisa Peterson, is countered by welcome shifts, some humorously illustrating the Poet’s weariness, others laced with tension-relieving spices of quirky humor.

The Poet is someone who might be found anywhere telling his story again and again to whomever will listen. A spicy sense of the contemporary happens when the Poet tries to explain why the war, in its ninth year of conflict, continues. Referring to the unrelenting, war-worn Greeks who refuse to quit, the Poet compares their attitude to the frustration contemporary people feel in a long, “will I ever get to the checkout?” grocery-store line.

As he muses, “You’ve been there 20 minutes, and the other line is moving faster. Do you switch lines now? No, goddamn it, I’ve been here for 20 minutes, I’m gonna wait in this line! Look, I’m not leaving ‘cause otherwise I’ve wasted my time.”

The time spent viewing “An Iliad” is never wasted. Directed by Christine Albright-Tufts, the actor’s wife, the play moves dynamically, invigoratingly and dramatically. It’s impossible not to imagine the time the couple spent at home polishing his performance. Also helping to accent the Poet’s many moods is music performed live off stage by cellist and composer Michal Palzewicz. The Grizzly Peak Winery in-the-round setting also generates a sense of audience intimacy.

The Trojan War is long-ago history, but the message of “An Iliad” remains ever-present As Albright-Tufts wrote in her notes about the adaptation, “This play begs us to ask, ‘Why?’ When the ending is always the same — loss, death, pain, grief — why does it keep happening? Do we learn nothing?”

“An Iliad” is being performed at Grizzly Peak Winery, 1600 E. Nevada St., Ashland, at 2 p.m. Wednesdays through Sundays through March 12. A talkback with Tufts was scheduled for March 1 and is planned after the March 8 performance. For information, see https://roguetheatercompany.com, email contact@roguetheatercompany.com or call 541-205-9190.