Alex and I saw two important plays this summer. In June, we saw ‘Night Mother at the Distillery district in Toronto, and this month we saw Trojan Women at Stratford. Euripides’ play is a tragedy in the classic sense, and Marsha Norman’s play could certainly be considered tragic for its elements of pathos, and the intimate view of the helplessness of human beings in the face of suffering.

Both plays were superb productions, and both scored high reviews throughout the city. The acting was stupendous. Sets were appropriate per play: a cluttered, lower middle-class suburban house in one; a sparse stage for the other, shaped only by light and evoking the desolate result of total war.

The tragedy of ‘Night Mother was immediately palpable because of its modern setting. We know what the outcome of the story will be, since we are introduced to it within the first fifteen minutes. It’s arrival is no less shocking and heart-wrenching. Trojan Women, by contrast, is placed more than two thousand years ago, in a city largely of myth, inhabited by characters whose situation is so broadly drawn that their motivations are obvious.

But Trojan Women is, by far, the superior play.

I had worried about Alex’ reaction to Trojan Women, considering that in this version, the role of Astyanax is played by a real child about the age of the tragic character from myth. So, we are forced to confront, face to face, a child whose life will end in bloody tragedy. When I outlined the story for Alex beforehand, he asked, “What are you doing to me?” It was only a half-joke.

As soon as the dialogue started, I was immersed in the story of the play, unconscious to everything else, and I didn’t wake up until we stood in ovation at the end.

It could be argued that some of the dialogue is heavy-handed, lacking the subtlety or the restraint of modern writers. Perhaps missing is the delicacy with which moderns are able hint at tragedy and suffering, making it all the more calamitous when its climax is presented. But this is also the strength of the classics. In repeating the tragedy over and over, in making his characters recite their woes, in making their suffering, to paraphrase Hecuba in this version, crash down on their lives so that all else is incomprehensible, Euripides leads us down a path of woe so raw, so palpable and immediate, that we are all but lost in the gross lives and circumstances of the characters. For me, it was emotionally exhausting. Throughout, I was on the verge of tears. In monumental strokes of acting, I was forced to listen to inhuman cries of pain. I was made to watch instances of brutality mixed with empathy, made to see characters recognize their own hideousness, made to watch otherwise decent people become intractable when confronted with the dilemma of doling out orders from above.

We had front row seats in this theatre in the round, the stage raised only a few inches. During the ovation, the actor who played Andromache happened to be standing directly in front of me, facing the audience on the other side of the stage. When she turned around, she did something everyone does every day, whether they’re in line at Hortons, or in the street, crossing the road on their way to the office. Or on stage at Stratford. She turned to face the audience where I sat and locked eyes with me, since I was closest to her, watching her. She looked for two, three seconds, then dropped her eyes away. Matching a gaze with a complete stranger is generally intolerable for most people.

In that small space and in that quick glance, the entire evening was repeated. Her performance rushed through my head, our applause surrounding her and the rest of the cast, her weary acknowledgement hanging as heavily as the tragedy we’d just participated in: the perfunctory and exhausted smile; her arm raised in salute and dropping heavily; her slow pace as she moved offstage with the others.

I was really quite drained. When we left the theatre, getting jostled by the crowd, I asked Alex what he thought. He enjoyed it as much as I. But curiously, he enjoyed its technicals more than anything, the pristine acting and the flawless delivery. He was fascinated by the Greek structure of the chorus. But the story, he said, did not shock or sadden him as much as ‘Night Mother, which for him was the superior play.

I’d misunderstood him. I thought the tragedy of the child would be too much, and would overwhelm him, but it didn’t. I thought the message of the tragedy of war, and the hints at the distance, or irrelevance, or non-existence of the gods, would strike him. He acknowledged these things but seemed unimpressed overall.

I thought my familiarity with this and other Greek tragedies perhaps gave me an advantage, but I’m not so sure.

We drove home from Stratford talking about pizza, and the beautiful little town, and the horrendous salad we had at the place we stopped for dinner.

I thought about the play and the tragedy we saw for many days afterward. I don’t know what element is in my head that causes this, or that forced such a strong reaction in me. The tears were almost always there, the quickly-drawn breath to suppress a hitch in my breathing coming almost constantly.

It was, after all, a mere performance. A play over two thousand years old. It ended as quickly as it began.

But these things are part of the tragedy, for me.

Louis About me, Alex Play