The program for Court Theatre’s Iphigenia in Aulis features a chart tracing the house of Atreus through five generations, from Zeus on down to his three miserable great-great-great-grandchildren. And theres’s a handy little biographical comment under each name. The blurb on Tantalus, for instance, notes that he cut up his own child Pelops, cooked him, and served him to the gods. Not to be outdone, Pelops’s boy Atreus made an entree of his two nephews and presented it to their father, Thyestes, for dinner. (Dessert? Their heads, hands, and feet on a platter.) Go on a generation and you’ve got Atreus’s heir Agamemnon getting assassinated by his wife, Clytemnestra, and her lover, Aegisthus—although, to their credit, they don’t eat him. These murderers are murdered, in turn, by Agamemnon’s offspring Orestes and Electra. Agamemnon had earned Clytemnestra’s wrath by sacrificing their firstborn daughter, Iphigenia, to the goddess Artemis in order to assure fair winds for the invasion of Troy.
To their vast embarrassment, Clytemnestra and Achilles learn about the wedding ruse together, when Clytemnestra greets the unsuspecting warrior as her prospective son-in-law. A chastened Agamemnon resolves to set things straight. Honorable Achilles resolves to do the same. But yet again it’s too late. The armies are raring to go, and they know something’s up. They’re hyped to get at the “barbarian” Trojans, who dishonored Greek womanhood by kidnapping Helen. They want their wind—and, no, they don’t mind the irony of slitting a Greek woman’s throat to get it. Offstage, master intriguer Odysseus has made the mob his own. And so, like so many Greek kings in so many Greek tragedies, the leaders become hostages to the led.
Through 12/7: Wed-Thu 7:30 PM (except 11/27), Fri 8 PM, Sat 3 and 8 PM, Sun 2:30 and 7:30 PM Court Theatre 5535 S. Ellis 773-753-4472courttheatre.org $45-$65
