IPHIGENIA 2.0

What can I say? Give me a show with dance numbers, acrobatics, plate smashing and a grand filicide and I'm happy.

And that's exactly what I got from IPHIGENIA 2.0 at the Signature. Nobody beats Chuck Mee for delivering to the modern stage the kind of blood, sweat and tears that would have been common fare in Greece 2500 years ago. Did it drag at places? Yes. Were the performances uneven? Yes. Was it a little too on the nose? Definitely. Did I leave the theatre feeling excited and stimulated? Most definitely.

The story of Iphigenia is a compact little gem, as can be said of most of the Greek tragedies. Agamemnon and the Greek troops are laid up in Aulis, waiting to start the Trojan War. In Mee's adaptation, Agamemnon (played by Tom Nelis with the earnestness and manipulative power of a seasoned politician) has received an ultimatum from his troops: before they will march on Troy, before some of them will undoubtedly die in battle, Agamemnon must show them that he understands sacrifice. They demand that he kill his daughter Iphigenia (Louisa Krause). And in the kind of moment of self-manipulation of which only seasoned politicians are capable, Agamemnon resolves to do so, for the greater good of Greece. Agamemnon summons Iphigenia under the pretense that she is to marry the soldier Achilles (the nebbish and charming Seth Numrich). Iphigenia arrives with a wedding train which includes her mother, Clytemnestra (Kate Mulgrew channels Kathleen Turner in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) who, on learning of Agamemnon's plan, threatens to kill her husband if he kills her daughter.

What can I say? Greeks!

The beauty of Mee's adaptation is the deftness with which he translates Euripides' legend to the modern day. Agamemnon is not an unerring patriot, but the kind of leader who is slightly out of touch with real life. In truth, he can ask his men to make the ultimate sacrifice, but cannot make it himself. His brother, the Greek general, Menelaus (Rocco Sisto), by contrast, understands the complexities of life and death and that difficult times call for difficult chocies to be made. In place of a chorus, Mee provides four nameless soldiers (J.D. Goldblatt, Will Fowler, Jimonn Cole and Jesse Hooker), four men who will eventually have to do the fighting and seem motivated mostly be a want to control some small part of their own honor and destiny. The myth is, of course, very timely with its war setting and its questions of the true honor of sacrificing oneself in battle and the danger of trusting the wrong leaders, but it's in the small overlaps, where Mee can slip the modern into the ancient, that make the interpretation so vital and interesting.

Not that it takes a whole lot to make Mee's work vital or interesting. One of the playwright's trademarks is his fearlessness in using theatricality to rocket his plays out of the realm of intellectualism into the open sky of pure emotion. To that end, IPHIGENIA 2.0 is full of celebratory dances, uninhibited bacchanals, syncronized movement, fighting, acrobatics, and lip syncing. These little theatrical treasures make the play almost unavoidably likable, appealing to something deeper than the critical mind, and creating a sense of revelry, like a carnival celebration. Unfortunately, it must be said that these moments do stop the action of the play, and contribute to some structural problems. On balance, though, its these purely emotional outpourings that make Mee's work so vivid and compelling and stimulating.

Blythe R.D. Quinlan's set is a masterpiece, a representational mish-mash simultaneously representing a Greek village, a battlefield, a barracks, a fox hole and a war room. The structure, which stands three stories tall and stretches from the deck to the top of the proscenium, is constructed of pipes, polls, ladders, steps and platforms, and the actors navigate the space like acrobats, sometimes rocketing from the floor to the top of the proscenium in seconds. Scott Zielinki's lights blast the set like the Middle Eastern sun one minute, and burn up red like fire another. Zielinki's light and Jill BC Duboff's sound design move in lock step, slamming, tearing and cutting through the play, wrenching the audience from scene to scene, moment to moment, emotion to emotion.

All of this under the watchful eye and hand of Tina Landau. I know a lot of people don't like her. This is the first thing of hers that I've seen, and I was bowled over by it. The staging was innovative and effective, and yet simple and refined. In a play which is made up of a thousand moving parts, never did two gears seem to gnash against each other. In the design of the machine and in teaching its operation, Tina Landau has excelled. The only criticism that I will lodge is that the actors performances were inarguably uneven. Kate Mulgrew emoting like a melodrama starlet from the 50s. Louisa Krause's unfocussed and sloppy presence on stage. A little more smoothing is arguably all that Tina Landau could have done to improve my experience.

Here's a newsflash: I'm extremely excited to be back in New York. So excited, in fact, that I think I may have gone just a splash overboard with this review. I'll try to pare it down later. But, for now, take it as evidence of how overjoyed I am to be out of the theatrical hinterlands of Austin, TX, and back into a place where things like this can happen.