If there is one lesson to take home from "Ajax," Sarah Benson's disturbing portrayal of the end of the great war hero, currently playing at the American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.), it's to keep pride in check. Unfortunately, while Benson's new interpretation of Sophocles' original story seeks to connect with the aftermath of brutality and violence, it loses everything else along the way.
Set in a post−apocalyptic army camp building, the play opens with an interaction between Odysseus (Ron Cephas Jones), decked out in fatigues, and Athena (Kaaron Briscoe), pertly perched on top of a Coca−Cola vending machine. It immediately becomes clear that the play is attempting to drive home morals about the tragedy of war today by placing a classic Greek tragedy in a contemporary setting.
The attempt, however, ultimately fails, and when it does succeed, it feels forced. The connection between Ajax's (Brent Harris) situation and the suffering felt by his family inevitably feels disparate from the stories shared by the "Greek Chorus," portrayed as shots of local community members as talking heads on a giant screen behind the actors.
The Greek Chorus is completely distracting and difficult to understand. At times, its members document their own life stories, and at other times they speak directly to Ajax as intimate acquaintances. The result is a confusing dialogue that tries too hard to force the audience to relate to the characters on stage. As a nondiegetic insert, they don't add much other than a welcome switch from the blood−covered figures on stage below them. At times, they can even be funny — albeit, an uncomfortable type of funny — in the midst of so much violence and despair.
The on−screen faces are jarring at times, with loud beeps jolting the audience out of breathtakingly horrifying moments in Ajax's downfall. Even more jarring is the absolutely hideous shriek uttered by Ajax's wife, Tecmessa (Linda Powell) after she discovers him dead — killed by his own sword (it is, after all, a Greek tragedy).
Despite the final message, which advocates understanding, the play concerns itself with glorifying madness, violence and death. Harris first walks on stage in blood−soaked fatigues and issues blood−curdling cries of ecstasy at his carnage. His brutal acts of delirium are later revealed as the back screen is lifted to display a hanging, disemboweled cow carcass and blood smears across the wall in a carefully crafted graffiti−like presentation.
Harris is able to switch roles from a homicidal maniac to a man who looks at the horrors for which his own hands are responsible. Ajax's sense of shame, however, has less to do with his destruction of helpless animals than with his embarrassment at falling for Athena's deception and failure to destroy his enemies. While Harris is convincing as a violent brute, he does not succeed in persuading the audience that his character is someone worthy of sympathy.
In fact, all of the characters come off as flat in the bright, artificial lighting of the canteen or the movie−screen faces of the Greek Chorus members watching them. Much of that is due to the set design and overall aesthetic, however, for Powell's and Harris's voices did resonate with a passion ill−fitting to their surroundings.
As a whole, Benson's play fails to coalesce into the great performance that it strives to be. The actors are passionate but too frenzied, and the Greek Chorus is innovative and yet mostly irrelevant. As Harris explains during the play to the other characters, the meaning of "Ajax" is "wailing," but he just never understood it before.
A.R.T.'s performance of "Ajax" leaves a similar impression of meaningless crying — emotions that strive to find meaning but cannot. The end result is a confusing mesh of disturbed emotions and visions of bloody smears across the walls.
