God Shed His Grace On Thee

Ego and alter ego (Oparei and Watkins) search for meaning in Gilgamesh. (Photo by Ed Kreiger)

Thinking big, feeling small: Siblings Orestes and Electra (Ronnie Clark and Christel Joy Johnson) in Orestes Remembered (Photo by Mark Seldis)

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More About

• Katharine Noon
• Stephen Sachs
• Stephen Mitchell
• Ronnie Clark
• Santa Monica

Zack Snyder’s just-released film, 300, is a hit — a flashy, fleshy, violent account of the Battle of Thermopylae, during which 300 Spartans tried to defend themselves against a bazillion marauding Persians. Curiously, while 300was setting national box-office records, two local theater companies were preparing productions of ancient works originating from the Middle East (Gilgameshat Pasadena’s Theatre @ Boston Court) and from Greece (Orestes Remembered: The Fury Project, spun from Aeschylus’ Agamemnonand presented by Ghost Road Company at Santa Monica’s Powerhouse Theatre).

That 300 captured the hearts (and $70 million in its first week) of American moviegoers offers a view into the deepest recesses of our national psyche. Though Gilgameshand Agamemnonhave very different structures from each other, they both stand in opposition to stories like 300. They show not just the glory of the battle, but how wars of conquest become attached to endless cycles of violence and tragedy. Life is a fleeting visage, these stories suggest. We can never be too sure of what’s really going on. The most we can do is love our families, love life, and keep our heads down.

This is not the message you’ll take home from 300, which is about the virtues of honor, duty, glory and combat. The movie is based on Frank Miller’s five-issue comic book published by Dark Horse Comics in 1998. These kinds of stories — which run from taming-of-the-West myths (in which straggling pioneers wanting just a plot of land and a cow to graze on it survive hostile tribes on the prairie) through that metaphysical American, Superman, and beyond — have always done well in Hollywood because they tap the essence of America’s Higher Purpose. We freed slaves and opened markets. We liberated Auschwitz. We spread capitalism and democracy to the Philippines, put our people in charge over in Iran and down in Central and South America. We even nuked Japan, and God blessed us with ever more power and prosperity. With a history like that, how could Superman not embody the unchallenged, blissful simplicity of our rectitude and resolve?

Stephen Mitchell’s translation of the Sumerian poem “Gilgamesh” (adapted by co-director Stephen Sachs) derives from the oldest written text we know, a fable based on the life of a despotic king who ruled circa 2700 B.C. The poem itself was composed about a millennium later, and the 11 stone tablets on which it was inscribed were unearthed in what’s now southern Iraq in the mid-19th century. And though “Gilgamesh” concerns what it means to be human, it could be said to be about the conflict between comics and literature.

Gilgamesh (DeObia Oparei), whose mother was a goddess (Fran Bennett), is the kind of king who — just to show who’s in charge — sleeps with virgins on their wedding night while the groom waits in the next room. Prayers by the people of Uruk for intervention are answered with the arrival of Enkidu (Will Watkins), carved from clay and living naked and untamed in the forest. A sex goddess (Cynthia Boorujy) seduces him, and their union civilizes and humanizes Enkidu so that he can enter polite society. In this production, Enkidu steps into Gilgamesh’s view just as the king is about to deflower yet another virgin. Enkidu challenges Gilgamesh, and the king likes that, accepting Enkidu as a brother. Both actors are buff —one is black, the other white, ego and alter ego, superhuman and subhuman. After a bout of wrestling reveals their matched strength, Gilgamesh gets the idea to travel with Enkidu into the Cedar Forest to slay a sleeping monster.

Why, you may ask? To prove he can. In the program notes, dramaturge Scott Horstein suggests that this is the first recorded preemptive strike. Enkidu has grave trepidation about messing with sleeping giants, but in the heat of battle, when the (offstage) monster is mortally wounded and begging for his life (in voice-over), it’s Enkidu who goads Gilgamesh to cut off the beast’s head. This is where the comic-book version, playing inside Gilgamesh’s mind, screeches to a halt, and the epic takes over, ridiculing Gilgamesh’s hubris and teaching him a thing or two. Shortly before expiring, the monster spits out a curse that Enkidu should suffer a painful death. You don’t just decapitate a monster of your choosing, then walk away. On his continuing adventures, Gilgamesh must endure the monster’s prophecy, then the fear of his own mortality, a futile quest for eternal youth and profound introspection on the purpose of life.

Sachs and Jessica Kubzansky stage a robust, physical production in front of Uruk’s city wall, well spoken by the actors. Sea travel across the waters of death is depicted with a prop boat and billowing silks. For all such classic storytelling techniques, there remains a subtle distance between the audience and the show, which may be a curse of having such a lavishly equipped intimate theater. As with the Taper, it’s as though the space itself demands opulent production values, rather than this production’s silk and video-projection minimalism, or it feels just a little bit emptier than it should.