A still from "I Am Divine." Photograph by Andrew Curtis.
Followers of what’s hot in the world of theater have already heard of Dennis O’Hare’s An Iliad, a lengthy monologue about the classic work—and its modern ramifications—that the co-author/performer has presented in NYC and on a touring production to great acclaim.
An Iliad (co-written by Lisa Peterson, based on Robert Fagle’s translation) is a theatrical retelling of the Iliad, Homer’s epic poem about Trojan War. You may not be familiar with all the twists and turns, but you probably have heard of Achilles, Helen, Hector, Paris, and other players in this ur-version of “Game of Thrones.”
Why a re-telling of the Iliad? Why now? Because the timeless themes of war and human vanity are always relevant, we are meant to gather.
So, after lone actor Jerry Vogel (as “The Poet”) lights an incense stick and some candles—and the singularly talented Farshid Soltanshahi contributes musical effects on guitar, tabla, and other instruments—the audience is regaled with tales bloody and bloodier from that ancient conflict. Patroclus is poked through with a spear, Hector’s corpse is dragged around by Achilles, and other precious moments from battle.
But this is no campfire tale of remote horrors—not exactly. Writer O’Hare, actor Vogel, and Upstream director Patrick Siler mean to modernize and personalize the Trojan War. At a recent performance, Vogel made eye contact with every audience member, and interacted a bit, asking us questions that were not rhetorical. He exhorted to imagine the soldiers in the Iliad—real people, after all—as soldiers from towns throughout Missouri. He encouraged us to identify with troops returning home to find their children aged nine years, spouses unfaithful, parents deceased.
His tone was remarkable—folksy and mellow and personable. Would he prove to be the beloved teacher who charms his students so thoroughly the material is nigh irrelevant?
In a word, no.
There are two great problems I found with An Iliad. The first is that O’Hare has set himself the task of making the events of myth resonate with modern audiences, and many of those events are the incredible stuff of Biblical-style miracles.
Achilles is a near-undefeatable demigod. A plague is blamed on Apollo’s anger. Zeus guides the flight of a fateful arrow. These are wonderful stories, but they do not jibe with more modern discussions of PTSD, foxholes, IEDs, and so on. Vogel, as “the Poet,” tries gamely to make comparisons, but the material never bridged over for me.
Other, more mortal plot points also have no contemporary equivalents. Achilles refuses to fight from pride, something no modern soldier, from Missouri or otherwise, would be permitted to get away with. The rage of battle is compared to the everyday road rage on the highway, as if to make civilized, mild men understand animal anger. It’s difficult to find the emotional meeting point where the sustained emotions of soldiers in war are comparable to those of a commuter feeling a flash of pique at being cut off and missing his exit.
The other difficulty of the piece is that a single actor must captivate an audience for 100 intermission-less minutes of monologue. Here, Siler has not sufficiently modulated Vogel’s performance. The gentle beginning gradually morphs to a frantic series of melodramatic expulsions of narrative. The interaction and pedagogical charm of the initial lecture yields to the performance of a string of apoplectic accounts of violent battles, delivered with clenched teeth and narrowed eyes. I was reminded of a child crashing his Hot Wheels toy cars against one another on the carpet; the sound and fury was unrelieved. An actor once said that if you really want people to hear you, speak softly, and they’ll lean forward in their chairs. Subtlety is not what this piece is about.
Of course, this is myth, and myth often connotes something bombastic. The Iliad is the definition of epic. It has lived for thousands of years, and it comes from the land where democracy and theatre (and feta cheese) were all born. The impulse is often to declaim a myth, with much stamping and gesticulation, and to adopt the grandiloquent tone of the orator, but that may distance the audience from material that is already 3,000 years distant.
Some of the stabs at making this relevant, like a lengthy blurting of the planet’s major wars recited in chronological order, are welcome. And as a one-person show, An Iliad requires deep effort from the actor who braves it. Vogel deserves kudos.
But the work, heavily reliant on The Iliad itself, is a convoluted epic starring scads of characters that fade into and out of the fore repeatedly. It requires constant explanations of backstory, and plays much better, with its gods and demigods, as a wondrous myth than an instructive lesson on man’s violence and ruin.
Upstream Theater presents An Iliad through June 9 at the Kranzberg Arts Center.
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Finally, the plus-sized, cross-dressing, super-browed muse of John Waters gets his due. Divine, born Harris Glenn Milstead, may be infamous for a single act of dog poop-related horror in Waters’ Pink Flamingos, but for fans of his off-the-charts hideous appearance and uproarious acting roles, a look at the real poop, if you will, is overdue.
I Am Divine is a warm tribute to the cinematic icon of shock and shlock that begins with his childhood, which was—no pun intended—not pretty. The effeminate Milstead grew up friendless and bullied; he would later channel this bottled-up anger at disco-club audiences and co-stars’ characters in a (mostly) faux rage.
He experimented with cross-dressing from an early age, and picked out his prom date’s clothes and make-up.
As teenagers, Milstead and John Waters got together, and the “Pope of Trash” (Waters) found his messiah. Christened “Divine” in a casual moment by Waters, the ebullient and fleshy actor appeared in Waters’ early, no-budget films, including one where Divine played Jackie Kennedy in wig and pillbox hat. The jumbo, hilarious Divine-as-Jackie freaks out in a convertible, as an actor playing JFK takes a pretend bullet. This would be envelope-pushing comedy today, but in 1965 it was genuinely shocking.
A circle of hard-partying outcasts of all stripes coalesced around Waters and Divine, making outrageous films and mocking convention. Divine began going to early “drag balls,” and unable to compete with the fellers trying to look dainty, he went in the other direction—with extreme prejudice.
With the eventual help of a maverick make-up artist and a hairline shaved back to accommodate his massive, painted Kabuki eyebrows, Divine created his signature look, which chewed up scenery like no character actor before or since.
Waters’ 1972 disgorgement Pink Flamingos, with its gag-inducing coprophagia scene, put Divine’s perverse career over the top. He was in-demand as never before. He appeared on talk shows and danced onstage at Elton John concerts; they were two exuberant dudes who became fast friends.
The rise of Divine’s career—including a tour-de-force in Polyester and a surprisingly subdued turn in Hairspray as the original Edna Turnblad —is the meat of the documentary, but as with any biography, the public requires darkness and dirt. Commentary from Waters, Mink Stole, and other “Dreamlander” ensemble players gradually sheds light on the man under the fright wig.
Divine could be shy in life, but, claim his pals, he wasn’t lonely. He enjoyed the proverbial “sailor in every port,” reportedly. His weight issue—fueled by daily marijuana use, which led to daily doughnut use —became more of a concern over the years as he aged.
At the time of his death in 1988, Divine was most concerned with money issues, his friends said. He wasn’t getting much work, and he knew the time had finally come that he would have to change—or even abandon—the Divine look to continue his film career. Miraculously, he secured a role—as a man, no less—on the super-popular Married with Children sitcom, which would have been the perfect new home for him. The night before his first day of filming, Divine unexpectedly died of a heart attack in his sleep.
Divine left behind a unique film legacy, to say the least, and influenced plus-sized, freaky icons like performance artist Leigh Bowery, wrestler Goldust, and outrageous drag queens freed from the bonds of faithful female impersonation. His headstone is routinely decorated with food and lipstick kisses.
In I Am Divine, one of his friends remarks that, “when you were with Divine, it was a grand moment of excess.”
QFest presents I Am Divine at 7 p.m. on Friday, June 7 at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium.
