Twelve-hour war makes a hit

It takes over 12 hours, counting intervals, to perform, but the production by the Denver Center Theatre Company of Colorado, in association with the Royal Shakespeare Company of Stratford and London, of John Barton's Tantalus is a palpable hit.

It took its author the best part of 20 years to research and write (with the assistance of Graham Ley) and it took the company six months to rehearse in Denver. Directed by Peter Hall and his son, Edward Hall, it caused a rift in the almost lifelong friendship between Peter Hall and its author, John Barton, because of the director's decision to cut Barton's original text from 16 plays to nine. Dublin-born playwright Colin Teevan was the writer brought in to assist in the editing and is credited with providing additional text.

The epic subject is the Trojan War, and this version owes nothing to the ancient Greek dramatists. The nine plays should, perhaps, be more properly described as a series of "episodes" describing the prelude to the war, the war itself, and the years that followed it.

The audience is first introduced to a cluttered 20th-century Greek beach, where a clutch of bikini-clad tourists is importuned by a local souvenir-peddler to listen to a story. This device enables us to get acquainted with the main characters who are to provoke and play out the bellicosities. As the episodes proceed, the tourists and the storyteller become gradually sucked into the action, but the theatrical conceit of narration is continued until the final episode, when all on stage are fully engaged protagonists or antagonists.

The individual episodes combine to provide a vision of the world that is as much about 2001AD as it is about the ancient Greeks and the world in which they lived. It is, as might be expected, a world of chaos. The recurrent metaphor is that of Tantalus who, having stolen some of the ambrosia of immortality when dining with Zeus, is punished by being tethered in a pool of fresh water which rises as if to offer him a drink or to drown him, only to subside again before he can even slake his thirst. All the time, suspended from the heavens above him, is a massive stone which, for no reason he can discern, may crash down and crush him to death without warning.

The gods of this world are capricious. The mortals are stupid or slow, greedy or venal, violent and rapacious, smug and hypocritical, occasionally decent or honest, rarely loving or caring. This, taken to physical extremes in Barton's telling of the tale, is the world as we know it today, is it not? And this, one suspects, is the primary reason why Tantalus is such a success.

It may not be the only reason. The Halls' staging is expert and lavish, with luxurious settings and costume designs by Dionysis Fotopoulos and excellent lighting designed by Sumio Yoshii. The music by Mick Sands, sparingly and effectively used, is appropriately evocative whether in war or in contemplation. Donald McKayle's choreography is simple and clear.

The text is, at various times, curt and intense, or comically ironic (especially when delivered by David Ryall as the narrator or as Peleus, the oldest hero of them all). Mind you, it can also be numbingly banal, as when it states pontifically that "there is only one way to cure all human pain: forgive but don't forget".

And then there are all the striking images which the production creates within the mirrored depth of the stage setting. There are small ones like Peleus and even Odysseus looking like refugees from the British Royal Air Force; Leda appearing from a garbage bin, having been ravished by a swan; or Hermione appearing as if on her way home from Ascot races.

And there are big ones like the swaying backsides of the ladies from Troy's court as they scrub the patio of Neoptolemus's house after they have become his slaves; the emergence of the shape-shifter Thetis from the ocean created when Peleus empties her on to the floor after she has secreted herself in the cup from which he is drinking; or the prophet Calchas sitting atop what looks like a towering tennis umpire's chair while he tries to adjudicate (on behalf of the god Apollo) whether or not Helen was guilty of war crimes.

There are also performances to be applauded, including Alyssa Bresnehan's addled Cassandra, Greg Hicks's velvety smooth-voiced Agamemnon and Menelaus and his angular, elevated, indecisive Priam, and Robert Petkoff's frantically violent Achilles and Neoptolemus. Alan Dobie captures the stolid sanctimony and hypocrisy of Odysseus, David Ryall the sheer sanity of the ironic storyteller, and Mia Yoo the tetchiness of Leda and the loopiness of Hermione. There were some problems, however, for many of the actors with Peter Hall's dramatically irrelevant use of masks. Without doubt, Tantalus represents the sort of dramatic event that is likely to occur only once in the average lifetime of a theatre-goer.

Tantalus is at the Theatre Royal, Nottingham, from today until February 24th (0044-115- 9895555); at Milton Keynes Theatre from February 28th to March 3rd (0044-1908-606090); at Newcastle Theatre Royal from March 10th to 17th (0044-191- 2322061); at Norwich Theatre Royal from April 4th to 8th (0044-1603-630000); and, finally, at the Barbican in London from May 2nd to 19th (0044-207-6388891).