Review
These Seven Sicknesses
Satomi Blair as Jocasta in THESE SEVEN SICKNESSES. Photo by Laura June Kirsch.
BOTTOM LINE: An admirably tackled production of epic proportions, where literary shortcomings can be largely overlooked thanks to heavy doses of charm and grit.
“A marathon presentation of contemporized and abridged Sophocles plays?” you ask in disbelief? Yes, indeed, complete with modern lingo punch lines, scores of young men with impressive beards, and copious well-executed stage blood. What’s that you utter? “Sound like five-hours of a good time!”? Well, in fact, Sean Graney’s These Seven Sicknesses, now playing at The Flea Theater, slickly coasts by surprisingly quickly, with actors themselves feeding you during two intermissions, creating quite a packaged deal and quite a satisfying evening.
Graney’s mega-play takes the seven extant plays from ancient Greece’s most notorious playwright (ok, ok, top three), shortens them, gussies them up for a young, hip audience, and sets them loose in a fifties-esque infirmary. Each segment last about 45 minutes to an hour, and takes place in the main hospital corridor. Each generally results in death and bloodshed (as only the Greeks can do), only to be carefully tidied up by the white-clad nurse-chorus who oversee all, doubling as sirens as they sanitize. Taking their turn in the ward are Oedipus, Herakles, Antigone, Philoktetes, Ajax, Elektra and Orestes, among others.
But die-hard Sophocles fans beware: while the outcomes are maintained, many of the plays have been inextricably changed in their shortenings, with events conflated or tinkered with so as to deliver the most contemporary punch and enable the drastic abridgement. And, as could be expected, some of the cuttings are not for the better, leaving some juicier bits of storytelling to the wayside in exchange for sexier bits of tabloid appeal, which occasionally don’t follow the existing narrative but serve to amp up the drama full well.
What Graney has done in his editing, too, is hone in on the domestic. No longer showcasing man’s struggle with the larger elements that be (Gods and the way of life they dictate, in the case of the Greeks), the familial units that writhe and triumph in this adapted work have been entirely domesticated, with these fates resting squarely in the hands of other men. While this shoves these stories into a totally contemporary light and vein of thinking, it also sacrifices the richness of man’s struggle with outside forces that are so beautifully captured in Greek drama. Not simply responsible for himself and others, man was subject to the way of the world as dictated those on an entirely unreachable plane above. Free will and pluck was not enough to necessarily change one’s course. By eliminating this vital portion of Greek understanding, These Seven Sicknesses has the tendency to fall into melodrama, with contemporized Greek characters who have lost their understanding of the world in which they came out of, and therefore sometimes seem to skip blindly down the path to the inevitable, lacking the pathos imbued to the characters upon which they’re based.
The actors certainly attempt to make up for these pitfalls. The epically proportioned cast of thirty-eight gives it their all, often hitting the high notes in terms of drama and only occasionally going overboard. But their contribution to the evening doesn’t merely include their acting. Director Ed Sylvanus Iskandar has attempted to create a truly communal feel to the whole affair, and so has let loose the cast before, during intermissions, and after the show to schmooze and mingle with audience members as equals. Actor upon actor eagerly introduces him/herself to any audience member who happens to catch their eye for what feels like much of the evening. For the most part, this eliminates the overly pretentious actor/audience divide, certainly creating some sort of community through the course of the happenings, and The Flea’s reputation for being adorable young people is upheld in spades.
The hours soar by enjoyably enough, and some of Graney’s one-liners pack a heat that only the 21st century could offer. The added bonus of dinner and dessert help make the evening into an event that admirably reaches to be a contemporary equivalent to the marathon performances of Greek drama in their day.
(These Seven Sicknesses plays at The Flea Theater, 41 White Street between Church Street and Broadway, through March 4, 2012. Performances are Thursdays at 6:30PM; Fridays at 6:30PM; Saturdays at 6:30PM and Sundays at 4:30PM. There are also Wednesday performances on February 1st and 8th at 6:30pm. Tickets are $35-$50 (including dinner and dessert) and are available at ovationtix.com or by calling 866.811.4111.)