Scena’s ‘AJAX’ is Tragically Over-Complicated
Striking design and a capable cast can’t save Scena Theatre’s muddled "AJAX" from falling on its own sword.
Before the house lights dimmed for Scena Theatre’s new production of Sophocles’ tragedy AJAX, I pored over the director’s notes in the playbill, as one does, hoping for insight into this modern interpretation from Scena artistic director Robert McNamara and writer John Tipton.
The notes were not clarifying. The main insight I gained from the winding torrent of artistic intent and Iliad-referencing backstory was that the play might register as similarly puzzling. Or, was it just me? Then, the voice of an oracle, as a patron nearby put down their playbill, pronouncing, “This sounds… complicated.”
“I’ve read Ajax,” their companion replied, assuringly. “It’s not complicated.” Maybe it’s this interpretation, then, which frames the mythological drama of Trojan war hero Ajax as an American soldier’s story, in the vein of films like Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket, according to McNamara’s mission statement.
The production suffers no lack of striking imagery and impactful performances, but doesn’t shape those elements, along with its poetic language and political commentary, into a coherent whole. The multiple layers of context rarely coalesce into a clear picture, despite emphatic choices in staging, design, and performance. In some cases, as with Oscar Ceville’s portrayal of Ajax, overemphasis is the issue.
Ajax enters distressed, already bloodied from a massacre he’s committed. Dressed military-style, he’s also wearing a heavy protective apron, more Texas Chainsaw than Apocalypse Now. The apron screams deranged killer, but, unless Ajax has just been slaughtering victims in his abattoir, the potent visual clashes with the combat milieu suggested by Michael C. Stepowany’s scenic backdrop of army netting.
Thus introduced as Leatherface lost in a Desert Storm, and propelled by Ceville’s overheated line readings, the character starts at a raging ten, and, though he loses the apron, pushes further up the dial as the drama unfolds. He doesn’t venture there alone. McNamara, ripping into his role in the play’s latter portion as stubborn General Agamemnon, offers a likewise broadly theatrical turn that overpowers rather than connects.
Fran Tapia, compelling as Ajax’s lover Tecmessa, delivers the required intensity of emotion in a way that serves her grieving character, and the thin slices of plot that filter through the fog. Ian Blackwell Rogers’ dynamic turn as Odysseus, a fellow warrior whom Ajax presumes his enemy, also helps steer the story.
This AJAX offers faint threads to grasp onto plot-wise, and that would be fine if the play took utterly to poetry. But there is a plot happening, it’s just hard to discern, even with a three-person Greek chorus whose main purpose is to digest the action into pithy observations guiding us forward.
The sailor-capped trio (Oscar Salvador, Jr., David Johnson, and Jessica Cooperstock) jauntily trade lines recounting history and legends, and their chanting can summon the goddess Athena (Ellie Nicoll). When they’re not chanting narrative text, they also sometimes supply live sound effects, which can be delightful. Their occasional lapses into a poetry of fragmented blurtings are less so, and, again, not that helpful in moving the plot.
Yet, the energetic chorus does add to the overall atmosphere, as does Marianne Meadows’ eye-catching lighting design, sharply marking the play’s various interludes and reveries. Greatly abetted by the lighting, projections (Sean Preston), and sound design (Denis Rose), McNamara sustains the production’s high-wire tension, even if we’re constantly left pondering what story they’re telling. Surely, it’s not that complicated.
AJAX (★★☆☆☆) runs through Feb. 9 at the Atlas Performing Arts Center, 1333 H St. NE. Tickets are $45, with discounts available for students, seniors, and military. Call 202-399-7993, ext. 2, or visit www.AtlasArts.org/events/scena-theatre-ajax.
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