(Chris Jones’s article appeared in the Chicago Tribune, 11/21.)
The brilliant central device behind Denis O'Hare and Lisa Peterson's radical new dramatization of the 15,693-line, 24-book Homeric poem known as "The Iliad," here dubbed "An Iliad," is thus: The story is told at great cost to the teller.
The Poet — Homer, we presume — who shows up all by himself at the Court Theatre, purloining and punishing the body of the remarkable Chicago actor Timothy Edward Kane, is a weary, lonely, Sisyphean man. He has been recounting the tale of the Trojan War across countless centuries. He tells us that, by now, he doesn't even remember some of the finer points of his own work.