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Messenger #1

by Mark Jackson

Art Street Theatre
Review in the SF Weekly by Michael Scott Moore (March 22, 2000)
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Killing the Messenger
By Michael Scott Moore

Ancient Greek writers were almost
without exception male aristocrats,
and the history they've left behind is
as slanted as some of their medical
advice. "Aristotle recommended that
a woman start bearing children at 18,
as wife to a man aged 37, for the
charming reason that they would thus
reach the end of their reproductive
lives together," writes the British
classicist Peter Jones. And: "Semen
must be hot on delivery, so Aristotle
did not recommend males with long
penises that would cool the semen on
its travels." Which leaves posterity
nothing so much as an idea of the size
of Aristotle's penis.

Mark Jackson's funny new play for
Art Street, Messenger #1, reimagines
Aeschylus' Oresteia from the point of
view of three messengers who look
like Depression-era laborers.
Messenger #1 flatters power to keep his job; Messenger #2 seems less
sycophantic but still kind of a wimp; and Messenger #3 is his girlfriend, a
modern-minded anarchist who has to dress like a boy to keep her job.
"On my messenger's journeys I've now seen the world for what it is, and
it's not right," says #3. History is "bought and paid for -- and not by the
likes of you and I." The concept owes something to Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern Are Dead, but the results are anything but derivative.

All three messengers speak slangily and act American, while
Agamemnon and the rest of the royal family look like colorful statues.
They wear gold satin robes, thick pale makeup, and behave like
cartoons of themselves -- Clytemnestra the bitch, Electra the bratty
princess, Orestes the spoiled proto-Hamlet, Agamemnon the pompous
lord. The messengers dart back and forth to Roadrunner sound effects;
there's something cartoonish about them, too. Art Street is a movement
group, so most of what happens onstage is carefully choreographed, and
some scenes from Aeschylus are recapped in precise and clever mime.

When Agamemnon returns from the Trojan War, his wife Clytemnestra
cuts his throat and becomes sole ruler of Argos. (Her lover Aegisthus
has been edited out.) The messengers are shocked by the power grab,
but #1 sucks up and announces Agamemnon's death to the people of
Argos as an unfortunate result of his war wounds. #1 introduces
Clytemnestra as the city-state's new queen, and she steps out with a
stern face, waving like Miss America. "That's the most heinous display
I've ever seen," says #3.

It turns out Messenger #3 was a servant girl for Orestes and Electra.
She helped raise them, and became a messenger only after Clytemnestra
sent her children away to slave in Phocis. Loyally, then, #3 carries news
of Agamemnon's death to Phocis. Her former charges don't recognize
her, or even offer a tip. They return to Argos, where Electra convinces
Orestes to slash the queen's throat; soon Messenger #1 announces him
as the new king of Argos, though he's insane with grief. "I told 'em she
was bad and you were good, so not to worry," says #1.

Telling the rest would spoil things, but let's just say #3 sees more
injustice in the name of the House of Atreus than Aeschylus ever
recorded. Beth Wilmurt plays her to near-perfection. She gets all the
best lines, and her comic, plucky, Midwestern voice defines the show.
"Helen didn't launch a thousand ships. Agamemnon launched a
thousand ships," she rants at #2. "If Helen had been saggy and
pear-shaped like a real woman ... Agamemnon wouldn't have been so
proud."

Gillian Chadsey plays Electra with excellent energy, full of bratty
princess-ishness, and Kevin Clarke is also strong as the spoiled,
quivering Orestes (though he's overwrought as Agamemnon). Their
funniest scene has Orestes and Electra laboring in a quarry (or
something) and swearing with real Greek fervor about the queen.
"Gold-digging hag. Penis-envying crock for spew! We are so fucking
screwed!" shouts Electra. "I'm a princess, goddamn it -- a princess!"
Karl Ramsey and David Babich are passable as the first two
messengers, but Michelle Talgarow is good only as Clytemnestra. She
becomes affected and unconvincing as Athena and the Furies.

Most assaults on the ancient canon as representing a conspiracy of
Dead White Males make the mistake of either 1) having no sense of
humor, or 2) forgetting that the very notions of justice that have pushed
our civilization above that of ancient Greece -- abolitionism, feminism,
civil rights, and so on -- have their very strong roots in Plato and all the
rest. Messenger #1 commits neither sin. It cuts up Aeschylus to explore
the class injustice and sexism behind the scenes of an Argive "Crime of
the Century" (Clytemnestra's murder), and manages, by the finale, to put
it all back together, leaving a litter of unrealized ideals. It's dark,
damning, graceful, and funny as hell.

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