DENVER — Whether the mountain comes to Mohammed or Mohammed comes to the mountain, you can bet it's going to be very interesting. . . .
The worldwide theater press, oodles of socialites and hundreds of excited international theatergoers witnessed some of the world's greatest contemporary theatrical figures from the Royal Shakespeare Company, who were visiting the Denver Center for the Performing Arts.
It was for RSC playwright John Barton's 20-years-in-the-making Trojan War epic, "Tantalus," which finally arrived last week.
Barton and visionary director Sir Peter Hall, founder of the RSC, and hosts of other professionals have been in Denver for the past six months to bring forth a new artistic work that all the preshow chatter promised would be no less than the ultimate peak of the international theater scene — a rumored 15-hour play.
Well, the rumor was wrong.
It was only eight hours and 15 minutes of onstage time. Still, that's a long show.
Since "Tantalus" is about events from three millennia ago, patrons enter a theater filled with artifacts and video displays. Plus, there are Grecian concessions — T-shirts, caps and pins on sale. "Tantalus" is a made-for-consumer event like the Olympics. In fact, it is the Olympics . . . of the theater.
As with any colossal attempt at an intricate new work, especially of this length and complexity, one cannot help but respect the courage, imagination — and the vast coffers (releases say $8 million) — just to bring the whole thing together.
Donovan Marley, of the Denver Center, is to be congratulated, not only for having the chutzpa to pull it off, but for pulling it off grandly, outbidding the Greek government, England and various smaller big fish, to land the premiere at the beautiful Helen Bonfils Theater. The 650-seat thrust-stage theater is well-appointed, plushly furnished and contains simple informal entrances along lengthy darkened corridors, which make one feel reborn upon entering the theater itself.
When you have great hope and high expectations, there also comes the dread of physical proximity, hour after hour of foreign material and the many planned moments of giant surprise, shock and bombast that could drive one to numbness. Knowing that, director and playwright have wisely divided the play into nine separate pieces, parceled by intermissions and lunch and dinner breaks.
Each piece is carefully crafted to last from 45 minutes to an hour.
So, along with a hefty program packed with factoids about everything from the genealogy of the ancient gods to philosophical meanderings about the gigantic effort, theater patrons are issued a stark "Schedule of the Day," which quickly became the bible of the day, containing names of each act, curtain and intermission times, as well as the planned times and places for lunch and dinner breaks (provided by the theater as part of the ticket price, and very delicious, by the way).
The set itself is a large round shelf, covered with real sand, a few bleached old hulks of broken boats, and a real pool of water, about 4-feet deep.
The solid black glistening backdrop reflects action on the stage and gives an eerie sense of grandeur and universality to whatever is about to take place. The set is added to and rearranged in each scene, becoming, by turns, seashores, war camps, houses, tents and temples.
So, how was it?
Well, frankly, it is not an especially pleasant play to watch.
Eight hours of rape, vengeance, fury, death and destruction follow the three lineages responsible for the Trojan War. But it is also eight hours of serious theater, with moments of surpassing beauty, raw power and absolutely magnificent acting. There are also moments of puzzling choices, odd characterizations and some long stretches of bewildering and questionable information.
It is live theater, occasionally at its splendid best but never at its worst.
The play is unusually striking and strikingly simple. Yet it is thoughtful, sometimes cumbersome and sometimes sleep-inducing . . . but not for long. Times of ponderous significance are followed almost immediately and even intermingled with moments of grandeur, excitement and, yes, even humor. In fact, both Barton and Hall have mined a good deal more humor from this serious and tragic script than you might expect.
Knowing full well that eight hours of play with only passing humor would sound a death knell, they have often juxtaposed serious or tragic scenes with comic ones. Some recurring characters enter with outright flippancy, including a just-blinded king with blood running down his cheeks enters, unaccountably dancing and playing the fool.
The first of three plays comprising the first act began promptly at 10 a.m. and seemed to start off a little on the shaky side. Although we are never really told the location of the events, one assumes it is Greece, where the playwright has chosen to instruct the audience by means of an old scruffy sea-sort, hawking "Star Wars"-like Greek god miniatures (Zeus, anybody?) like peanuts at the World Series.
The stage is scattered with modern young bathing beauties in bikinis who have all apparently graduated from college knowing the names of the gods, people and places of the Trojan War. The gnarly old beach bum quickly settles down to tell these little college know-it-alls what it was really about. Hence, we are drawn slowly into the cycle of the play.
A burst of thunder and lightning here, the sudden appearance of extra players there, and quickly we are in the thick of it — gods and goddesses, names from storied books, the faces and forms of heroes, heroines, beasts and villains long gone inhabit our imagination for eight anxious hours playing out their love, lust, hate, sorrow and stupidity for all to see.
The acting is uniformly superb among all the major roles. Though all worked in masks like the Greeks originally did, the result was at once fanciful and off-putting. It did allow actors the exhausting opportunity of playing multiple roles.
Of the players, Greg Hicks stands out as Agamemnon, Priam and Menelaus. His careful, fraught and dancelike characterizations match, and often set the tragic mood perfectly. His rather drab but meaningful delivery and marvelous sense of timing often produce real humor where a lesser actor would fail utterly. His is a magnificent and winning work.
Among the ladies, Ann Mitchell's Hecuba and Alyssa Bresnahan's Cassandra had powerful and exemplary scenes of beauty, power, dignity and exhausting passion. It is hard to imagine players giving more than is given in these roles. These actors went right to the core.
Kudos to Mick Sands for his magnificent but never overwhelming original music score, which wove in and out of the action effortlessly with exceptional grace and charm.
Though one can imagine much rough language and bawdy play among soldiers during a 10-year siege, there is none in the play.
However, there are precautions for theatergoers, in addition to the length the play because there are many scenes of blood and gore rarely seen on the American stage.
Though the violence actually takes place offstage (like in the ancient Greek theater), buckets of neon-bright red blood appear again and again on the hands, faces and arms of many characters. In one instance, the gore entirely covers the body of the nearly naked Achilles after he has sacked Troy.
A real, many-pronged stag is mounted upside down on a giant spear with liquid "blood" seeping from its tongue to the ground. Offerings are made to the gods with what appear to be real beastie entrails.
The second caution may be pooh-poohed by the "sophisticate" crowd but must be mentioned: There is full frontal nudity of both sexes.
While this may not be unusual for more erudite metropolises of our country, there were audible gasps and extreme tensions during these non-erotic displays.
It must be said that the nudity here is not obscene and is certainly within the pale of the story, but anyone paying the hefty price of the ticket should know going in that there will be eye-popping moments ahead.
Many themes develop over the play's many hours. The stupidity of war, the stupidity of man and the hopelessness of mortals' attempts to make sense of the nonsensible. . . . Whether one agrees or disagrees with the conclusions drawn by the artists is almost irrelevant.
In the end, this event became like the marathon — lots of tension, long hours, some high dramatics along the way, and everyone being amazed that anyone could do it.
Like any event of enormous variety and virtuosity, there are meaningful and deeply moving moments and others that one would just as well forget.
"Tantalus" is not for everyone, but for some, it is an event that may change their world.
Editor's note: James Arrington is director of the theater program at Utah Valley State College.
E-MAIL: arringja@uvsc.edu
"Tantalus" continues at the Denver Center Theatre through Dec. 2. One-day marathon performances are scheduled for Nov. 18 and 25, and Dec. 1, from 10 a.m. until 11:30 p.m. Tickets range from $245-$280, including catered lunch and dinner.
Two-day cycle options are also planned throughout the engagement. These include performances from 2-10:30 p.m. on the first day, and either 7-10:30 p.m. or 2-5:30 p.m. on the second day, including a catered dinner on the first day. Tickets for these performances range from $240-$270. Discounts are available for students, senior citizens, faculty members and groups of eight or more.
For reservations, call 800-641-1222 or visit the DCTC's Web site at ( www.denvercenter.org).